5 Minutes With…Phace & Misanthrop

If you were to bank on any producers to push the capabilities of sound production and design in within the parameters of drum and bass and beyond, you wouldn’t go far wrong to put your hard earned money on these two.

Phace & Misanthrop have been devastating eardrums with their blistering take on all things neurofunk, both separately and together, since the early part of the ‘00’s. Coming to prominence with releases such as Hot Rock and Viperfish on Teebee’s label Subtitles, Florian Harres and Michael Brauninger have reached the upper echelons of the genre as producers by delivering some hard hitting, forward thinking beats and demonstrating flashes of technical genius whilst doing so.With their label Neosignal Recordings they’ve had a vehicle to unleash their continually progressive sounds since 2008. Tracks like the brooding yet brilliant Cold Champagne, Vintage, Latitude and the earth shuddering impact of Desert Orgy are all prime examples of the varied arsenal of production weaponry these guys have. Each one different in style but tied together with the thread of two producers giving much attention and detail to their craft.

With one LP, 2010’s From Deep Space, collabs with the likes of Spor, Rockwell, Alix Perez and Noisia under their belts plus gigging like crazy during the whole of last year, Phace & Misanthrop are back. And it appears they’re not messing around. Fresh off the back of the recent Motor EP they’ve also been busy putting the finishing touches on their Neosignal side project. Giving them the chance to explore tempos outside of the D&B box and with an album due anytime soon, it’s looking like there’s about to be a lot more amazing boundary stretching music from the German pair.

I asked them a few questions about their latest EP and tried to find out a little bit more about their forthcoming Neosignal band album and live project.  

You’d been a little bit quiet on the release front but have recently stormed back with the Motor EP. How’s it feel to be back amongst it musically? For us it actually didn’t feel like we were that quiet. We spent most of the past year writing the Neosignal band album but we also released Phace & Misanthrop music in the form of the Cargo Series (NSGNL009 + 010).

We put out some young talents singles on Neodigital Recordings by Mefjus and Emperor, collaborated with Alix Perez for a track on his forthcoming LP and of course we wrote and finalized the music featured on the Motor EP.

In terms of touring, 2012 was one of the busiest years for us. We’ve been on the road A LOT. To support the launch of our Neosignal band project we also produced some Neosignal remixes for OWSLA, Mau5trap and Shogun Audio. So indeed it was a super packed 2012 for us and flew by like a hyper sleep.

In general though, we’ve just never been fans of putting out music constantly in order to keep up a certain noise level or presence. We feel it is more important to say something when there is a good reason to, but it feels great to have released a new Phace & Misanthrop EP. The response we are getting is awesome and it really makes us smile when people enjoy our creations.Obviously MPD is one of the tracks on the EP. Did it feel good to get that out there finally? Sure it did! The track has been around for quite a while, that is true. It just needed a final touch and that obviously took a little time. But we are happy it’s now found its way into people’s record boxes and on their hard-disks.You collaborated with Mefjus on the track Twisted. How happy are you that he’s blown up in the way he has over the past year or so? When we released Mefjus’ single last year we knew that he had the talent and skills to climb his way up the ladder. He’s been successful in proving this so far and has just recently dedicated his life fully to writing music so the future should look very bright for him. Besides his music he’s also is a really cool dude and friend, so we are super happy to see things working out for him the way they are.In March you unveiled your new Neosignal band project in form of a live performance at Fabric. For those who may not have seen it give us a little insight into it and how it came about. Like I mentioned earlier, in terms of our Neosignal project we dedicated 2012 fully to write our take on electronic music that isn’t related to the Drum and Bass we are writing as Phace & Misanthrop.

When we finished writing the Neosignal LP and showed it to Noisia in January, they signed it for their label. We’re absolutely thrilled about that. They’ve been supporting the entire Neosignal project big time and we can’t wait for the music to be released.

The live performance we did at Fabric was the starting point for us, in terms of performing the music live as Neosignal and in terms of launching the band to public. Even though the connection is really close, Neosignal needs to be seen as something separate to what we do as Phace & Misanthrop or to what we do with our label Neosignal Recordings.I was at the show myself and there was a lot of music at around 100bpm. Is your Neosignal project a chance to explore a bit more down tempo stuff? Happy to hear you came along, I hope you enjoyed it as much we did! It was a very special night for us. What we do as Neosignal is not just about a chance. It’s more what we’ve wanted to do and have felt like doing for quite a while now; writing diverse electronic music free from expectations, limitations or categorization.

I can say that the Neosignal LP sounds like the way we felt in that specific moment. It’s very honest and uncompromising music. The music for the LP in fact is all around 86 to 120bpm but we didn’t really care about its tempo or genre or whatever whilst writing it. We also don’t care what tempo or genre the forthcoming music we write as Neosignal will be. Neosignal for us is all about the music in the first place and about creating something new for us, something that has this specific sound and vibe we’ve got stuck in our head. Now you’ve got material back out there what can we expect from Phace & Misanthrop? Is there a follow up to From Deep Space in the works? In terms of another Phace & Misanthrop LP there are no specific plans at this stage. It feels good to have the Motor EP out right now because we really like the EP format for D&B. I can say that we’re hoping to put out another Phace & Misanthrop EP, or at least a single, in the second half of the year. The Alix Perez collab will be available when his LP drops.What do you listen to when you’re not playing or making your own music? We listen to a lot of rock. Psychedelic rock, Krautrock and stoner rock but also to old school and more recent rock bands. Music from the 70’s and 80’s, independent music, experimental, electro, classical music. Anything that gives us a kick really. We give any music a chance.

It’s like reading. You have to read to understand but you don’t read the same book over and over again. That would be super boring.Lastly… What’s the secret to a successful production partnership like yours? Which of you has the worst studio habits? One would be to share a common sense. To have your own opinion but also be open and receptive to anything new and also open to your counterpart’s ideas. If you multiply your talents and skills, find ways to compromise and play fair then a production partnership can work. This isn’t a golden rule but is what we found works best for us.

In terms of worst studio habits I think we share the same one: we both tend to crank the sound we just created loudest in the track. I guess this doesn’t sound really funny or special and is like in any band. So to share some more in depth insights; when I really like the track we’re doing and I’m bored because Michael is busy working on it, I do mad spins on the studio chair in sync to the beat until I feel dizzy. Whereas, Michael always starts optimizing the studio system when he is lacking creativity. We are just ordinary freaks I guess!

Check out the Motor EP below.