BISMUTH Review
Lunacy Audio sent me a copy of their new effect Bismuth, a polyphonic chord resonator. There’s a few of these types of resonators out there, they always seem to be popular with the “color-bass” producers. For full disclosure, Lunacy Audio sponsored my video, but did not ask me to write this review and I would have likely made a video and review anyways.
These chordal resonator plugins like Chroma and Prisma have always interested me, but I’ve yet to really give one a shot. When I saw that Bismuth would also be a Beam node I instantly got excited. This means yet another unique effect for the Beam ecosystem and I can place Bismuth inside of Portals for even crazier effects.
At this point I really need to update my Beam review as there are now nine total nodes available. On top of this, many of the nodes are on the more experimental side rather than being typical effects. This means you can explore fun and innovative territory within Beam very easily.
As far as Bismuth is concerned on its own, I can’t quite say how it compares to other chord-resonator plugins, as I’ve yet to really explore these, but at a glance it does seem like there’s some unique offerings here. The arp will play through the notes one by one with various patterns, making this an amazing tool for glimmering textures. The motion section acts similarly as it seems to crossfade between different notes of the chord similar to the new Minimal Audio Poly-Flanger.
The spacing controls allow for some really unique tones. I can’t quite explain what they are doing, but they seem to spread and stretch the notes or possible the harmonics of the resonators creating more atonal and physical acoustic characteristics. Finally the mixer section has a simple tilt filter to adjust the tone, but also a high and low cut that can be used to pass through the dry signal. This can allow you to apply Bismuth to just the bass frequencies, or you can isolate the high hats in a drum mix.
I think Bismuth is one of the deeper effects added to Beam along side with Taps and Grains. When combined with the various routing and other modules of Beam it becomes emergent by expanding the capabilities of every other module. All this said, I do think the chord system can restrict the utility of any effect. Any preset will need to be edited to match your song’s key and if you have any key changes you’ll need to swap between plugin instances. Also, my biggest complaint is the graphic, the crystals look cool, but they look NOTHING like bismuth, I’d love to see the twisting rectangular geometry of an actual bismuth crystal. Complaints aside, I can’t wait to utilize this new module in my Beam presets and it’s so cool to see Lunacy Audio continuing to expand their effects range.