Cradle State Machine Alt Textures relies heavily on its epic sounds$99 ($79 introductory offer), cradle.app
Alt Textures is the 11th sound collection for Cradle State Machine, created by producer and former Bring Me The Horizon keyboardist Jordan Fish, who collaborated on the initial sound capture with Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor. The collection includes leads, pads, basses, rhythmic patches, and outlandish sound effects designed to give your productions a dark, cinematic edge.

READ MORE: “There’s no rules and nothing you can’t do”: Jordan Fish on production without boundaries

The sounds were created with the very same hardware synths and effects Fish uses in his production workflow, and he also brought important contributions in the form of a selection of patches specially designed by producers and heavy-hitters in the sound design game like Mick Gordon, Noah Sebastian, and Zakk Cervini.
As an instrument, State Machine uses a sample-based architecture with dual layers and sufficient synth parameters to reshape any sound in the library and meld it with your own production style. However, Alt Textures is a genre- or aesthetic-specific collection, so you’re buying into the style of the sounds and the vision of the musicians who created them. This means I can’t expect to find sounds that suit every niche, but there are certainly areas where stylistic intersection allows crossover into applications I may not have expected, so I’m exploring Alt Textures to find out about its capabilities and limitations.

Using State Machine
Many synth purists sneer at sample-based synth instruments, often referring to them as simply a ‘ROMpler’ when describing them. However, for producers looking to find the right sounds and immediately incorporate them into their arrangements, State Machine is a platform that certainly doesn’t overwhelm you technically or interrupt your creative flow.
State Machine uses two layers for each patch, which can be linked with a leader/follower hierarchy or controlled independently across the Synth and Audio Effects sections, while the macros and MIDI effects are global. Within Alt Textures, which has 232 patches, there is a collection of 67 sound sources that can be filtered according to their characteristics and used across the two layers.
While State Machine doesn’t have an additional synthesis engine like Omnisphere to let you combine synthesis with samples, it does have some basic synth waveform samples and provides a straightforward platform for sound shaping and creating expressive instruments from well-crafted sample layers.
With a choice of mono, poly, duo, or legato modes in the Source section, you can determine your approach with any sound, and the MIDI effects allow you to define the scale, create chords from single-note input, and build sequences with an arpeggiator. Meanwhile, you can change the way the sample is triggered with the amp envelope, or shape it dynamically with the filter and LFO, as well as a selection of five effects unique to Alt Textures, including a custom DIY distorted chorus created by Jordan Fish, bitcrusher, tape saturation, modulated delay, and reverb.
For a commercial music producer or composer, this makes the State Machine instruments appealing because the sound design work has been done for the most part, so you can easily rework the sounds that catch your ear into your projects without having any previous experience with synthesizers. While each State Machine collection is relatively small compared to the average preset library, it never feels limited – I always manage to find a group of sounds I could easily repurpose and knit together.
Image: Press
Exploring Alt Textures
Browsing through the Alt Textures sound library, I’m particularly impressed by the attention to detail in terms of the layering of each sound, and how alive and organic it feels to play. Naturally, many of these sounds are designed to cut through heavy rock mixes with guitars, so they have a distinctive edge to them when played in isolation. However, this isn’t a problem because State Machine allows you to bypass effects and solo each sound layer to quickly find the part of each sound you actually want to work with.
In this process, I discover that the quality of the built-in effects is incredible and each one really adds a unique flavour in a warm and natural way, with a simple set of controls that prevent you from getting lost in the sauce. Although you can’t manipulate sample-based sound sources with the same level of flexibility and control as synth waveforms, the quality of the filter and envelopes in State Machine allows you to sweeten sounds and change the focus of sounds that are perhaps too far forward in the mix.
The range of sound sources—synth layers, guitars, vocals, stabs, plucks, and more—lets you replace a component of a sound to give it a different timbre or change the character and feel of the instrument completely using synth parameters and effects. While most of the sounds will easily suit bright and punchy rock, EDM, or pop mixes, there is also potential for use in motion picture scoring; the macro controls on the home page make it easy to automate risers and other time-based effects to suit the pace of your composition.
What stands out to me is the sheer simplicity of the workflow and the fact that I don’t feel the need to add anything to these instruments once I have arranged them. With a few elements working together, they sound relatively polished and mix-ready, which is something that certainly favours professional workflows, hence the popularity of Kontakt instruments for commercial applications such as film scores and advertising music.
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Is there more to Cradle’s State Machine than meets the eye?
Although somewhat limited in their applications, it is refreshing to find that State Machine collections like Alt Textures do what they say on the tin, as it were. Rather than becoming your go-to instrument, each collection is a specifically curated selection of shades within your palette. Like a sample pack designed for a particular music style or film genre, they are ideal tools to reach for when that particular project comes along.
In the case of Alt Textures, this could be an EP you’re producing for an artist with a dark cyber-punk aesthetic, a soundtrack for an intriguing action film, or for scoring a futuristic sci-fi game.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense about the State Machine collections is that, although the control interfaces are identical (except for the themed graphics), the presets and sound sources are not interchangeable, and your DAW recognises each one as a separate plugin.
If there was integration between the 11 State Machine libraries within a single plugin interface, it would instantly become a far more powerful instrument and sound creation tool. Hopefully, this is something Cradle will look into in the future because it would add loads of value to the platform and all the hard work done by the talented sound designers who created these instruments. Rather than cherry-picking, it would incentivise purchasing the entire suite of State Machine instruments as a bundle.
Until then, Alt Textures remains a niche purchase that will suit those with appropriate projects in mind, rather than forming part of a larger, essential toolkit for all.
Image: Press
Key features

Curated sound library created with hardware synths and effects
232 patches from 67 sound sources
AU, VST3, and AAX plugin formats
Collection works within Cradle’s State Machine instrument
Dual-layer sound source blending
5 effects including reverb, delay, and tape saturation
Creative MIDI effects for inspiring new ideas

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