An instrumental version of our latest ETHR single, Lucid.

We’re majorly proud of the production on this one, so wanted to put out a version that showcases some of what was going on behind the vocals. We love going for the cinematic sounds and Hans Zimmer was a big influence, particularly on the orchestral arrangements and the electric guitar tones.

Most of the orchestral parts were built using Cinesamples plugins and one of our favourite Native Instruments sound libraries, Arkhis.

I originally played in the bass part, but we couldn’t quite nail the tone we were looking for off the back of the DI signal from my wee bass guitar (i.e., I don’t have a Dingwall) so we opted for reprogramming the part using GroveBass, which is a phenomenal plugin that captures the sounds of one of my favourite modern bassists, Simon Grove (Plini, Protest the Hero, Intervals).

Guitar tones all crafted using Neural DSP plugins. The reverb-drenched lead parts in the bridge were a combo of Archetype: Nolly and Eventide’s amazing Blackhole reverb.

I programmed the drums using Superior Drummer 3 and mixed them using GGD’s Smash and Grab compressors (amongst other things). This was also my first time using the Sonnox Oxford Transmod on the drum bus to give it some extra punch and I am now officially in love. This one will definitely be a go-to of mine in the future for drum bus processing!