Montage by Splice Phantom Hour: Suspenseful Percussion

During the Autumn of 2023 Michael Askill, a highly prolific and accomplished Australian percussionist was introduced to sound designer/composer (and regular Splice contributor) Liam Fox O’Brien. The two met at Michael’s home studio in Mullumbimby, Australia to connect over their shared love of rare musical instruments and conduct a 3-day long field-recording session.

The aim was to catalogue the hundreds of one-off, handmade percussion instruments from around the globe in Michael’s collection and dive through Michael’s 50+ year back catalogue of unreleased recordings to forge a completely original library for Splice. 

Phantom Hour: Suspenseful Percussion is a vast consortium of truly imaginative, melodically-charged percussion grooves and soundscapes, powerfully expressive one-shots and fx fitting for a dark, eerie, and cinematic backdrop. Michael’s unparalleled performance styles, across countless instruments, including gongs, marimbas, vibraphones, waterphones and the glass harmonica evoke a range of emotions that call to mind moments of suspense, mystery, desire, action, and psychological drama. Liam’s unique approaches to the live recording process and post-production methods of resampling, tape manipulation, and digital sound design techniques served to bring this eccentric capsule of Michael’s past work and imprint of his immense collection of sounds into a cinematic universe all of its own.

From hypnotic mallet loops to the ambiences of processed percussion and haunting gongs, there is an abundance of material for creating atmosphere, drama and suspense in your next track, film score, or production. Explore this hidden realm of resurfaced sounds and build a unique sonic world of your own.

258 Samples