Chase Bliss: Mood

Day in, and day out, there are a lot of pedals that pass through 5Starr Sound Labs. Nick and I are fortunate enough to play a lot of new and interesting effects pedals. We’re in the golden age of effects pedals, and while for the most part, new pedals are improvements or innovations built on existing effects, every so often we get something completely new. The new Chase Bliss Mood, is exactly that, it’s new, it’s weird, we love it, and we think you will too.

The Chase Bliss Mood is more than just a pedal, it’s a collaboration. Chase Bliss, Old Blood Noise and Drolo have combined their powers to create the Mood. If you haven’t heard of Drolo (David Rolo) he’s a pedal maker straight out of the mountains of Belgium who caught the eyes and ears of Chase Bliss. The Mood as described by Chase Bliss, is a :”two channel granular micro/looper delay” Like the Chase Bliss Dark World, the pedal is divided up into sections. One side is Old Blood Noise, the other Drolo. You can activate both of them independently or have them on going into each other and vice versa.

On the Old Blood Noise side, we’re entering “granular delay” territory. The Mood has found itself among good company with the likes of the Red Panda Particle and Dwarfcraft Grazer. With the Mood you can modify the repeats, change the tonality (tape, analog etc) as well as the pitch/harmony of the repeats. There’s even an envelope filter! The tracking on the Mood is impeccable. It’s a solid granular delay, and that’s just one section of the pedal.

This is where things get interesting. Occupying the Drolo side is the “looper” portion of the Mood. Don’t think of the “loops” as your standard loop ala Line 6 DL4 or Ditto Looper. It’s easier to approach the loops as extended repeats. (You can try and loop it like a Dl4, but it takes quite a bit of precision). You can start, “record” a riff and the Mood will repeat it. When you play over the loop, it “interrupts” it, so you can get weird stuttering effects and you can time stretch it to your hearts content. Dial in bit rate, clocks, even harmonies for the repeats and there’s plenty of weirdness under the hood. This is just scratching the surface, the dip switches are a different game entirely and they can at times, reconfigure the entire pedal.

There’s a lot to dive into, and this might be our longest video yet. As cliche as this might sound, this pedal needs to be heard to be believed! We love that people are craving weirdness and companies like Drolo, Old Blood Noise, and Chase Bliss are answering the call.

-Juan