Spitfire Audio London Contemporary Orchestra Strings Review - From Scary to Beautiful

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London Contemporary Orchestra Strings is a collaboration project between Spitfire Audio and the London Contemporary Orchestra.

One thing is certain, this is not your typical string library. While you will find some more straightforward long and short articulations here, the main purpose of this library is to give you access to very unusual playing techniques and sounds. 

It includes 4 different instruments: Violins, Violas, Celli and Celli + Basses in octaves with over 100 unique articulations. The sections are very small with 6 Violins, 4 Violas, 3 Celli and 2 Basses.

About the London Contemporary Orchestra

The London Contemporary Orchestra was formed in 2008 and is an extremely innovative ensemble that has earned a lot of respect through their various collaborations and incredible live performances.

They have worked together with Radiohead, Frank Ocean, Steve Reich, Foals, Beck, Arcade Fire, and many more. 

The LCO is also featured on many soundtracks for world class film and television music including The Master, Alien: Covenant, Phantom Thread, Macbeth, Assassin's Creed, Suspiria, You Were Never Really Here, American Animals, Moonlight, There Will Be Blood, McMafia and Under the Skin. You can also hear them on the Radiohead album A Moon Shaped Pool.

How does it sound?

This library was recorded at the Spitfire HQ, which is a small and not very reverberant studio. Because of this space and the small sections all of the sounds are very upfront, dry and intimate, which I really like. I think it sounds great, but some people may prefer a more lush string sound.

You also get 6 different mics to further shape the sound to your liking. One close mic, a room mic, 2 different processed effect mics and two stereo mixes. One of the mixes has a nice natural sound and the other one is highly processed with a lot of compression and other effects to make it really punchy. This can be very useful, if you need something to really stand out in your mix.

From scary to beautiful

What sets this library really apart are all of the unique articulations you really can't get anywhere else. A lot of these are perfectly suited for horror movie soundtracks or experimental music.

For example Granular to Ordinary starts very aggressive and scratchy and then transitions into normal longs. Then there are various kinds of Woozy Vibratos, which heavily shift the pitch up and down almost like the detune function of a synth and convey an uneasy feeling.

The long and short Slackened articulations also sound pretty brutal and are great to surprise your listeners and add some grit to your compositions.

Maybe you feel like you can't get much use out of this library now because you don't write a lot of scary tracks, but luckily it's not all scratchy and unnerving. There is actually a very beautiful and intimate side to the London Contemporary Orchestra Strings. 

Articulations like Sul Tasto and Harmonics are very soft and stunningly beautiful. Then there are great sounds for building unique textures like the gorgeous Spectral Scrubs and the lower Dynamics of the Irregular Tremolos.

These are the kind of unique sounds that really make it worth having this library in your palette.

Can you use LCO Strings for normal string writing?

There are fairly normal long articulations called Vivid Long and a few standard short articulations like Staccato, Spiccato and Pizzicatos, so you can definitely use this library to write more standard chamber strings music.

The biggest downside, though, is that there is no legato. You can fake it to some degree by overlapping the notes and adding some reverb, but I wouldn't use this library for very melodic writing.

Another way around this is by adding some solo legato strings on top to get the transition sounds. The ear will often not be able to tell the difference that way.

You can also use the London Contemporary Orchestra Strings to add some detail and organic texture to bigger string ensembles like Albion One, I feel like it works really well for that too.

Final Thoughts

All things considered, this is definitely more of a niche library and I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner as a first bread and butter string library. If you would like to have a similarly dry sounding library with nice legato and lots of other articulations, Spitfire Studio Strings would be a great choice for that. The core version is also really cheap for the amount of content you get and you can upgrade anytime, if necessary.

Here is a link to Studio Strings: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/spitfire-studio-strings/

But back to LCO Strings. If you already have your basics covered I think all of the unique articulations here make London Contemporary Orchestra Strings a valuable addition to your palette. Some of the sounds lend itself towards scary or more extreme stuff, but others are very beautiful and intimate. Also the raw organic sound makes it a great layering library to add realism to bigger ensembles.

Pros:

+ Extremely unique articulations

+ Dry and intimate sound

+ Great for creating interesting textures

+ Very effective for scary and more aggressive compositions

+ Sounds very real and organic

Cons:

- No legato

- Less articulations for Celli and Basses

London Contemporary Orchestra size: About 28 GB (56 GB required during installation)

Current Price: 349 $

You can get it here: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/london-contemporary-orchestra-strings/

Also check out the walkthrough by Paul Thomson:


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