French trio Signs take us through their electric new ep via Eatbrain, equal parts disconcerting and life-affirming. And that’s not to mention tales of airport dashes, train visitations and did we mention the centipedes… ?
We swallowed the medicine they gave us and went completely in!
Hello Signs! Can you take us behind who you are?
Signs is a trio made up of Lionel ‘Le Lutin’, Julien ‘Primal Therapy’ and Niko aka ‘Opsen’.
Le Lutin has been about in the D&B scene for over 15 years: you might heard of him in the past with releases on Bingo, Chronic, 36Hertz, Function and TOV just to name a few, and he’s mostly known for been one the major D&B DJs in France.
Primal Therapy and Opsen have been working as a duo and separately too and you might heard some of their work on labels such as Vandal and Kosen. Our work has spanned a lot of genres… now it’s multiplied by three.
You have a track here called ‘Black Meat’… what the hell is that?
Black Meat is a DRUG, it’s taken from The Naked Lunch movie. It’s Centipede Meat.
In fact The Naked Lunch was the concept behind the Eatbrain ep, most of the tunes on it has been named after the movie, and that’s behind the – very wicked – artwork too. It’s a big inspiration.
Beat generation literature and William Burroughs references aren’t plentiful in D&B I must say. It’s there in ‘Interzone’ too…
Inspiration can come from many different ways: we get inspired by a lot of different things, could be the concept behind a movie, or a sample that inspired us. It could be a picture, it could be a place, a souvenir, a vision, an emotion… we just translate it, or kinda draw it, but with sounds.
Who’s some heroes in art and film then?
We are not big readers but we love movies a lot. We like to NOT watch who did the movie and then get surprised by it…
To name a few: David Lynch, Thomas Vinterberg, Gaspar Noé.
We also love Picasso as he was so ahead of his time, a visionary.
You mention Eatbrain, how did the linkup come about?
Well it’s a funny but simple story. We had a mate organising a gig in Toulouse and booked Jade, then I just gave him a phone call to get some backstage pass and he told me that he had an issue with Jade getting in from the airport.
We collected Jade and we literally put headphones on Jade ears asap. Luckily there was a big big traffic that day on the road ha ha and it gave us enough time to play him about 10 tunes!
From that time, Jade told us straight that he was really impressed by the quality and the amount of tunes we did in a short spaces of time. The rest is history!
And the Jade remix on the ep?
Oh, we just sent him the stems…
Ha ha, no there’s a lot more to it.
One night, about two or three weeks before the release Jade and I spoke on the phone. We decided that a Jade remix would be great, and that a fifth tune would improve the ep too. Then a very short time here it is, fresh!
I hear that you three initially coming together as Signs has a story?
Well, we didn’t have any real clear plans of doing Signs.
One day we just linked up and start hanging out together at Niko’s ‘Opsen’ studio, but this was all following our individual or duo projects, and we just realized Optiv was playing at Le Bikini in Toulouse, a couple of days later.
Lutin just said ‘I know Ed (Optiv) really well, may be we should try to make a collab tune, the three of us, and bring it to him! We’ll see what happens.’
And that’s what we did.
One week later ‘Osaris’ and ‘Bash Around’ were signed on Red Lights records, we didn’t even have a name!
In fact it was Optiv that encouraged us as he thought that the music we came with had serious potential.
Who are some music heroes you have… any genre.
Well there so many and as we are three, there’s even more!
But for me personally (Le Lutin), it could be someone like King Tubby, this man invented dub by doing a mistake when pressing an acetate and he just forgot to put the vocal channel on it.
When he play it out in the weekend, people got totally mental to it and discovered another way to feel or understand the music, feel new emotions and kinda travel with it, with delays and FX, bringing people to another dimension.
I heard they crashed down the fence in order to get near it…
Dub was born, and a lot of nowadays music, especially bass music’s got that upfront bass. It’s been a revolution and been influencing so much nowadays, from future hip hop, Dubstep to Trap, D&B…
There’s also men like Laurent Garnier, Jeff Mills, Bob Marley off course, the pioneers and precursors in general are some sort of heroes. The list is unending.
So what does a typical Signs set sound like? If it includes material like ‘Percuss’ it must be crazy…
Well anything anything Mental, Futuristic and most of all, anything we really feel, the selection can go from Annix or Ivy lab to full mental neurofunk stuff, Noisia, Mefjus, Audio and so forth.
We like to get surprised AND surprise the listener.
We’re making a point on testing out a lot of our own stuff on the crowd, stuff we did in the week at the studio, and this includes ‘work in progress’ tunes.
We love freshness, and yeah just like ‘Percuss’ you mention for sure, anything that sounds really interesting, fresh, sonic and innovating, but for sure it need to have a certain level regarding the mixdown and production.
It definitely has to be next-level stuff.
Check out Eatbrain Podcast #23 by ourselves; it’s something recorded live during one of our DJ sets, you might get an idea.
Though what we do is always evolving.
I note the location of the set, so What’s the scene like right near you?
The D&B scene is quite healthy at the mo, here in France, if you look at a label like Kosenprod that we work closely with and just release a single called ‘Dedale/Dyspraxia’, they’re also promoters of the Konnect events and Enter The Grid in association with Neurofunkgrid.
As well we would mention Vandal Records which is run by SKS, who’s also the promoter behind the Dirty Dancin’ party at Le Bikini, Toulouse, and Redeyes.
Even if you just look in Toulouse, there’s a lot of guys like The Clamps with stuff coming on Project Trendkill/Citrus. Some wicked tunes!
There’s also BlackOwlz with an ep coming on Evol Intent’s own imprint.
You have any parting stories about life on the road?
I (Lutin) remember being in a train, going from a gig to another, and I was kinda half asleep in the train, and I just heard the train guy making an Announcement, and what came at the end of it was ‘BIG UP TO LE LUTIN AND MC YOUTHMAN in the train, for their huge DJ set last night… reeeespect.’
We were like WTF!?
Turns out the train guy was at the gig the night before.