So, there you are, slowly trying to make your way to the escape pod along the dimly lit corridors of your interplanetary cargo ship, suspecting that all your fellow crewmembers have already met a rather grisly end. At this point, what would be the thing that you would least like to hear? Well, I suspect it might be just about anything with the word 'alien' in the file name from Samplecraze's Galactic Textures. In contrast, if you are a composer or sound designer who works in the sci‑fi genre, Galactic Textures might be right up your street. Available as a WAV‑formatted download, this library provides just over 100MB of material. All the WAVs are presented in 16‑bit, 44.1kHz stereo and there are 199 files in total. The sounds generally range between two and 10 seconds in length.
No prizes for guessing the type of content in this library. A goodly number of the samples can probably best be described as sound effects and might be used as one‑shots rather than as loops. For example, there are various mechanical and electronic noises that might be used to represent equipment operating or the sounds of electronic communication. Equally, there are plenty of sounds that have an almost organic quality to them, which are great for those rather eerie alien wails and screeches. The collection is not just about sound effects, however, as a proportion of the sounds also have a good rhythmic element to them. These tend to be throbbing metallic noises, electronic bleeps and the sounds of large things being hit, rather than the more traditional drums. However, they are rhythmic and they do allow musical compositions — albeit rather abstract ones — to be constructed if required (and there are a couple of examples that can be auditioned via the Samplecraze web site).
While most of the content is dark in tone, this is not unrelenting gloom. The occasional C3PO‑style robot chatter or comedy moment (the wonderfully named 'drunk robots falling down', for example) does lighten the mood. That said, I suspect the collection is more likely to appeal to those working on 'horror in space' films or computer games. Despite the 16‑bit format, the samples themselves are very well presented and I'd have no problems with using them in a commercial context. There are, of course, a number of other sci‑fi sound effects and ambience sample libraries out there and, while Galactic Textures probably doesn't break any radically new ground, it does strike a decent balance between content and price. Ideal if you need to scare someone witless in a spaceship on a modest budget! John Walden
£14.99 Including VAT.