Airwindows releases
Pyewacket old school compressor plug-in 25th
October 2016
Airwindows has released
Pyewacket, an old school compressor plug-in inspired
by Chris Johnson's (Airwindows) love of the 60s/70s
recordings out of London's Olympic Studios, which
had and used Pye compressors on many of his favorite
classic and prog-rock records.
Pyewacket is a strange beast. It’s
inspired by how much I love the 60s/70s recordings
out of London’s Olympic Studios, which had and used
Pye compressors on many of my favorite classic and
prog-rock records. Once you recognize the sound,
nothing else will do: the musical event is
delineated with hallucinatory intensity.
Mind you, for ten or twenty THOUSAND
dollars it had damn well better hallucinate musical
events on command: these are not compressors normal
people can have, not anymore.
However, I’m ‘chris from airwindows’,
so for me it’s not just a matter of mimicking the
faceplate or even the specific behaviors of the
device. I want something more original, that can get
the essence of that electrifying sound. I might not
play like a musical hero, but I want a compressor
that can deliver that crackling voltage. And as I
was listening to examples of a homebrew Pye replica,
it suddenly hit me: I know how to make a compressor
cut back just the body of the sound, leaving that
energy and transient definition. I can also bring in
the ‘brickwall filter’ behavior the Pyes have, as
needed. And I have a whole life of devoted music
listening off classic vinyl records to guide me. I
can get the sound.
