I’ve continued soundset series before, especially for Omnisphere and Zebra – the likes of Horizon, Colossus and Lazarus, for example.

One of my favourite series has been Nordsund for Zebra. It started from synth programming sessions for the fourth series of smash Nordic Noir hit, The Bridge. The have been four releases in the series (Blood, Gold, Dusk and Snow), with two more already in the pipeline.

When I started making some lovely, dark, analogue drama sounds, instead of creating a brand new soundset, I thought it would be an interesting change of trajectory to continue an existing series with a different synth; hence the new Diva Nordsund.

I’ve been having an enormous amount of fun with Diva recently (as can be witnessed by the release of Anahera at the end of last year), finding evermore intriguing ways to push it beyond its obvious subtractive analogue modelling capabilities and into new sonic territory. Big up to Urs and the team at u-he for including such clever little tricks under the hood!

Diva Nordsund is full of these fascinating new techniques. Alongside some dark and atmospheric analogue basses and pads, there are a wealth of modular style loops, sequences and textures, as well as icy and organic basses, drones and synths.

I’m always watching new Nordic Noir TV series but, this soundset has also been inspired by some classics. So, alongside the fresh synth sounds of the likes of The Valhalla Murders, Bordertown and Rebecka Martinsson, there’s classics like Broadchurch, Borgen and The Killing.

There’s much more to investigate and experiment with Diva, including some more Anahera and Nordsund, and even some more surprising and slightly un-The Unfinished-esque ideas sitting on my studio PC!

So, if you’re a Diva fan, the retro-futurism is looking bright!