Earlier this month neurowarriors Phace and Misanthrop dropped the speaker-shredding Motor EP series. Not content with that, they completely laid waste to Fabric with their Neosignal live debut last month. Damian B manages to pin them down as they momentarily refuel their engines…
Can I firstly mention Motor: was it a similar process to the Energy EP in a way?
The same as with the Energy EP, we wanted to release the Motor EP in a nice audio and visual combination and context. We have never been fond of really abstract artwork, so we always try to keep it as real as possible. The same goes for the music: there often is a message or certain meaning behind what we write. It can be pure fun too though, but we generally like a conceptual approach to things and we like to share things we’ve got on our minds.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgT3vepXqQA
So is it always easy to collaborate with each other, or is it sometimes difficult to bring together your disparate styles and influences?
Two cooks in a kitchen can sometimes be a little tricky. Nevertheless we managed to find a way to aim for the same thing together as we both are willing to be receptive to the counterpart and to new ideas. Our workflow is quite complementary. Even though we both have a clear idea of what we subjectively want and prefer, we found ways to multiply our skills and ideas. We also share a common sense and are quite like-minded in many aspects. But also we are different persons with own opinions and different approaches to things.
Your music always feels like there’s a lot of “design” to the sounds – is that fair to say? How do you see the process of designing sounds, is that something that is separate to actually writing a full track?
To us the process of designing sounds and writing a song belongs together. Just like knowing how to use colours and tools and painting belong together. You can just draw a good picture if you know what you want to do. Once you have learned the basics and how to use your tools, everything else flows much more smoothly and that leaves more time and space for being creative.
Random things can come to a good result too, and we do use this technique once in a while. But mostly we just love playing around with sounds to get them the way we have them sounding in our heads.
To my ears the sounds you use in your music always sound very precise, do you find that some clubs don’t have good enough sound systems to do that justice? And which clubs do you think can do justice to your music?
The PAs both at Fabric and Berghain do an outstanding job. Many clubs do not offer the same quality of sound. We would love it if more sound systems were able to transport all of our musical facets. We do consider how our music will sound on these systems though… And overall, too, so you can actually listen to it at home on your perfect setup, hear all the detail and you can also bang your head when listening to it on a more ordinary club rig.
The debut of the Neosignal live show happened at Fabric recently, how did it go? Can you explain what’s different about the live act vs. DJing?
It went really well we must say! Launching a non-D&B project on a Critical D&B night at Fabric was quite a test for us! Especially as nobody knows the music yet! But everyone has been really receptive and the feedback we got was really great! A live set simply gives you more opportunities regarding performing genre-crossing music and improvising on music. We love DJing… but it is nice to do something completely different and new for this project.
Can you tell me some more about what we can expect from you guys this year? You are working on a Neosignal album, right? Any tours or collabs we should be talking about?
Yes, our biggest project is our forthcoming Neosignal LP named Raum und Zeit. Our friends Noisia signed it for a release on their Division Recordings imprint and we aim for a release of the LP late June. The first single release is going to be a track entitled ‘Planet Online’ (including a couple of remixes) and is scheduled for May. For info on our tours etc. you can always find the latest news at neosignal.de
Motor is out now. Part 1 / Part 2 