Mystic State join Signal for their part in Demand Selects #1, up with the likes of Taelimb, Robustus & Moody not to mention RoyGreen, Protone & Dual for some very fluid, far-ranging and understated visitations on the template.
Over to MS, without further ado…
Mystic State how are you, what’s new? What are you up to?
Will: Hey there! All good here thanks. Just woke up so enjoying a nice cup of Tetley’s and eating dippy eggs and soldiers.
Mike: Aye up mate! I’m currently at uni studying Spectral Harmonics at 8am over some coffee and cake! Definitely wakes the brain up.
How did you link up with Signal for this?
Will: We started talking to Jon about eight months ago after we both swiped right for him on Tinder.
When we found out that he was also interested in making grubby noises we thought we’d see if we could come up with anything decent.
Mike: We sent him a bare-boned version of ‘Seven’ and he sent us an early version of ‘Beneath the Surface’, and we sent both of them back and forth until we were happy.
Jon was really keen to work with artists from the deeper depths of drum and bass and make something more experimental and we are very glad he hit us up because we felt great that he wanted to try be more diverse with his sound.
And it gave us a chance to learn more things from him and vice versa.
Take us into when ‘Seven’ came about? What inspired?
Mike: ‘Seven’ started as a quick studio session when we lived in Bristol together. We kinda forgot about it, then rediscovered it and thought it would be cool to get Jon to work on it with us. It was inspired by some old film scores.
The weather outside at the time played a huge part in how this track came together too.
Will: ’Seven’ is a example of the more industrial sound that we lead towards on occasion, full of harsh and disconcerting noises and a ruthless beat pattern. It’s kind of a horror-core style atmosphere over a set of militant drums. Purely 6am rave business.
What about the vibe behind Demand Selects #1 in general?
Will: The ‘Selects’ debut release has been tirelessly curated by Carlos (Demand Honcho) and perfectly encapsulates a clean, dark and sometimes unforgiving side of 170 music that you don’t get to see too often.
Mike: Yeah, we and the others involved are extremely happy with how it’s turned out.
Carlos is a great label boss and we think its great he’s branching out as a label and getting many very talented underground producers involved espeically Max (Taelimb) as he’s a fellow Flexout artist and is always putting out quality music!
What’s some tunes that are inspiring you right now, any genre?
Will:
Sniff & Morriarchi ‘Coffin Varnish’
Skeptical ‘Offline’ VIP
War ‘Makashi’
Congi ‘The Escapade’
Anything by Stray & Halogenix
Hi-Tek ‘Music for life’
Nine Inch Nails ‘The Perfect Drug’
Akkord ‘Vector’
Sam KDC ‘KVLTVR’
https://soundcloud.com/auxiliarylabel/sam-kdc-kvltvr-preview
Eusebeia ‘Sentient’
Mike:
Zap Mama ‘Bandy Bandy’ ft.Erykah Badu
Bambooman ‘Wade’
Fixate ‘Inside’
Anything from St. Germain
ASC Fervent Dream
Transparent ‘Trying’
Flxk1 & Ena ‘749’
https://soundcloud.com/hidden-hawaii/flxk1-ena-749-clip-2223
Gramm Personal Rock
dBridge ‘Wonder Where’
Gill Scott Heron ‘Almost Lost Detroit’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yotCw66_G1g
… the list could go on and on, we get inspired to make our sounds from very different ends of music. We are also into a lot of musique concrète and more downtempo ambient artists. Some artists that are definitely worth checking out would be Thomas Köner, Tim Hecker, and Denis Smalley to name a few.
Are you travelling this year, where?
We’re potentially heading off to Austria and Perth to perform at some point this year, all is yet to be confirmed though so keep an eye on our fb for updated and if you would like to book us then hit us up on our contact email.
Is the fabric of D&B changing/unravelling? Which can be good: more chaos.
Will: D&B is being pushed to it’s limits at the moment, in a fully positive way. In my opinion there’s no other genre as technically advanced.
Mike: I used to feel that Drum & Bass can be infuriating as you have to stick to certain templates, but certain producers out the within the past year or so have proved that smashing those boundaries down can work brilliantly. Respect what the Ruffhouse lads do, incepting techno vibes into the mix!
What things are finding their ways into the sets these days?
‘Clean Break’ by Phobia is about four years old now, but it still manages to sneak into the sets one way or another. ‘Rafale’ by War usually gets a play or two as well.
And where do you like playing out?
When it comes to venues, we enjoy playing anywhere that the crowd is happy and the system is on point. There’s always a nice vibe in bristol Lakota, Crofters Rights, and Timbuktu to name a few… Really nice energy on Stokes Croft/Gloucester Road. if you are visiting Bristol then it’s the place to be for great art/music culture!