Independent musician and sound designer Adrian Bartholomew has released Arcturian, a pay-what-you-want Kontakt instrument for experimental sound design.
Arcturian is available through Gumroad with $0 as the minimum price, so you can download it for free or leave a donation if you want to support the developer (which is always cool).
The idea behind the instrument is pretty interesting. Adrian says it came from a hardware modification he used while playing in a rock band, where a screw was wired near the guitar output jack so he could physically touch it and short the signal.
Honestly, I’d be scared to do it (not a big fan of touching electricity, haha), but he says that running that unstable signal through various distortions, pitch shifters, and wah created the noisy and unpredictable character that inspired Arcturian.
I wish this were compatible with the free Kontakt Player, but it requires the full version of Kontakt for normal use. If you load it in Kontakt Player, it will run in demo mode and time out after 20 minutes.
That caveat aside, Arcturian is a very unusual Kontakt instrument. I do not remember seeing this exact idea pulled off in Kontakt before, and it should appeal to anyone who likes glitchy artifacts, dirty textures, noise, and circuit-bent style sounds.
The instrument includes two short voicings, two long voicings, three pads, a dedicated noise section, and six built-in loops. You can use it to create textures and all sorts of rhythmic loops with that unique circuit-bent flavor.
Each voicing, apart from the noise section, has a character switch for moving between Clean and Dirty or Dirty and Rancid variations. That gives you a quick way to push a sound from clean to glitchy and somewhat mimics those insane circuit-bent setups in the hardware world.
There is also a performable filter with Depth and Resonance controls. The dev recommends mapping it to a MIDI controller and using it live while playing, which makes sense because glitch instruments often work best when the movement feels hands-on rather than static.
The effects section includes delay with time and feedback controls, plus two reverb modes for placing the sound in a larger space. Arcturian also has a dynamic interface with lightweight animations, which can be turned off if you prefer a simpler workflow.
I like the interface, too. It gives you an idea of how this thing will sound before you even start playing it. I know it is not the most expensive-looking interface, but this dirty industrial vibe matches the tone, and I dig it.
Arcturian is a Kontakt instrument and requires the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt for use without the Kontakt Player demo timeout.
Download: Arcturian (FREE/PWYW)
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Last Updated on June 1, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
