If some of the recent reviews on Altwire have shown anything, it’s that I love weird, and I love quirky. So when I find something that combines both of my loves and sounds beautiful on top of it, that’s an instant win for me.
Enter Fever Dreams — a Kontakt library crafted by Grammy-certified vocalist Ari Mason. This isn’t your typical celestial choir or sterile set of oohs and aahs. Instead, at its core, Fever Dreams is a playground: meticulously recorded samples, and more than 100 patches that dive headfirst into breathwork, chants, overtone singing, improvised languages, ritualistic howls, and whispered textures.
If you’re the kind of composer or producer who craves organic unpredictability — that raw, emotional pulse that synthetic sounds often lack — you’re going to feel right at home here.
The Heart of Fever Dreams
Rather than aiming for the same kinds of over-perfected vocal sounds, Fever Dreams thrives on humanity. Every sound — whether it’s a tremoloed vowel, a throat chant, or a syncopated breathing pattern — carries the fingerprints of real performance. Ari Mason didn’t just record clean takes of standard techniques; she captured the quirks, the unfiltered timbral shifts, and the strange in-between moments that feel alive on their own.
The content is grouped into several broad categories, each brimming with character:
- Calls of the Wild: Primal whoops, monkey-like screeches, mouth clicks, rhythmic shouts.
- Breaths & Whispers: Breathing patterns, whispered textures, pseudo-hi-hats, and breath percussion.
- Sustained & Tremolo: Long vowel drones, erratic vibratos, overtone stacks.
- Chants: Three chant patches, each with seven tempo-synced rhythmic patterns.
- Hums: Warm, resonant hums — simple but deeply textured.
Nearly every rhythmic element syncs to your DAW’s tempo, allowing for smooth integration in dynamic arrangements. Triple-tracked patches and dual velocity layers add extra depth to every performance.
A Work of Art: The Interface
Before you even press a key, Fever Dreams makes its mark visually. A painted-style illustration of Ari Mason is centered on the screen, surrounded by vibrant foliage, surreal birds, and a collage of nature-inspired imagery.
The background legitimately feels like a “Fever Dream”, blending Renaissance aesthetics with modern fantasy. Fonts resemble old manuscripts, making even menu navigation feel magical. It’s a UI designed to inspire — and it does.
Who Is Ari Mason?
Ari Mason is a classically trained vocalist, viola da gamba performer, and composer with deep roots in cinematic scoring. Her vocals have appeared in major projects like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Castlevania: Nocturne, Planet Earth III, et Fortnite.
Specializing in extended vocal techniques, her work includes overtone singing, throat drones, improvised languages, and rhythmic vocalizations. Fever Dreams is the culmination of her years of experimentation — a toolkit for other creators looking to explore the expressive range of the human voice.
What It’s Like to Use
Loading a patch in Fever Dreams is instant, with a great range of keys to work with. There’s no heavy CPU drain and no complex learning curve. The sounds are expressive out of the box — triple-tracked for width and layered for nuance.
Install is easy via Native Access, and because it works with the free Kontakt Player, there’s no barrier to entry. The library responds beautifully to performance dynamics, making it ideal for scoring or ambient expression with minimal tweaking.
Sound Design Playground
The real fun comes when you twist things up. When Ari was kind enough to let me test this library, I don’t know if she was expecting me to experiment in this fashion, but there’s one thing I hope people learn: I love crazy.
As many of the samples are inherently percussive, they morph beautifully under FX plugins. Using distortion, pitch mangling, granular effects, and formant shifting, I was able to transform vocal clicks, and vowel drones into experimental sounds that sound straight out of a Prodigy track. This library is intended to add vocals to your music, but trust me: you’re going to want to run this through some effects.
There’s a certain magic in realizing a gritty drum patch started life as a percussive whispered chant. This is a library that begs to be pushed — and rewards experimentation with sounds you won’t find anywhere else.
Use Cases & Genre Applications
- Film/TV/Game Scoring: Horror, sci-fi, documentaries, and fantasy themes benefit from its eerie, ethereal textures.
- Ambient & Experimental: Use vowel drones and tremolos to create layered, immersive pads.
- Electronic Music: Chopped breaths and chant loops bring human feel to techno, IDM, and glitch tracks.
- Pop & Indie: Add subtle vocal textures under hooks, bridges, or transitions.
- Sound Design: Build cinematic hits, risers, or custom effects from unique vocal gestures.
Specs Recap
- Download Size: 7.8 GB
- Patches: 100+
- Kontakt Compatibility: Kontakt Player (Free) or Full 6.8.0+
- Sample Layers: Triple-tracked, with 2 velocity layers per patch
- Installation: Serial-based via Native Access
Réflexions finales
I hope this library won’t be the last library we see from Ari Mason and her team. With the creativity on display here, I feel it would be great to see what they come up with next.
Fever Dreams is expressive. It’s haunting. It’s brave. And it dares you to create something honest and new.
For composers, producers, sound designers, and sonic explorers alike, Fever Dreams is a refreshing break from other vocal libraries out there. An invitation to try something different.
