ig beat, click house, electroclash, disco LP last year (a supposed return to their ‘Wormhole’ glory both their creative alliance and growing stature by
B
punk, hardbag, ragga garage, nu nrg, days), the futuristically welded, clinically engineered unveiling their own label Neosignal later that year.
dream house… the annals of dance music ‘From Deep Space’ is one serious shot in the arm. Both talk of an almost telepathic understanding
are stuffed solid with half-forgotten (and “Things always go in cycles and right now the sound is at between them — “if I don’t have any ideas, Florian
usually ludicrously conceived) subgenres its most exciting again,” believes Phace’s dominant always comes up with something that I would do if I had
that are destined never to regain their lost prominence. creative force Florian Harres — fellow Phace member the ideas,” jokes Michael — and one quality that
Instead of progressing into anything of lasting Nicolas Ruoff taking a backseat on this project. “The definitely resonates across ‘From Deep Space’, both in
relevance, most have either crashed and combusted drum & bass scene in general has really opened up and their solo and collaborative work, is the borderline anal
emphatically, morphed into new sonic mutants or simply it’s the best thing that could have happened to the retentive levels of sonic detailing and structuring.
limped quietly out of the cultural landscape like some sound. I was bored by the scene two years ago. It was like Just when you think you’ve pinned down the flightpath
dodgy knee’d footballer hitting his mid-’30s. ‘fuck, man, there’s nothing new here.’ But things have of their sci-fi cruises through alien bass wormholes and
But if you thought techstep — the darkest, most changed and there’s a new excitement within the scene.” heavy hitting drums, techstep juggernauts like ‘From
machine-melded arm of the d&b mainframe — belongs Deep Space’, ‘You Keep On Talking’ and ‘Going Down
on that list then it’s about time you were introduced to Obsessive detailing Slow’ suddenly veer off into new directions or attack your
German deebee soldiers Phace & Misanthrop. An album deeply inspired by Florian and Michael synapses with a new barrage of digital fire. For both
Just like their Dutch musical brothers Noisia, when Phace ‘Misanthrop’ Bräuninger’s shared love of science fiction, Florian and Michael, it’s an obsessive detailing and harsh
& Misanthrop’s twist on techstep’s guttural cyborg the title track’s vocal sample — “this seed was planted industrialism that owes as much to their surroundings as
clatter struck out in the mid-noughties — check Phace’s from deep space” — has an extra resonance given that it does their eternal, crate-digging love of drum & bass.
nasty bass belcher ‘Hot Rock’ on Teebee’s Subtitles in Hamburg’s Phace and Stuttgart’s Misanthrop first
2005 or Misanthrop’s metallic grunge roller ‘Viperfish’ on established contact in the cyberworld. Specifically, by “The areas of Germany that we’re from are quite
the same label — it was accompanied with a fresh wave of exchanging ideas on a German d&b production forum industrial, it affects you,” reasons Michael. “Creating
optimism among those who longed for the unrelenting, called Future Forum. technical, industrial soundscapes is why I make music.
dystopian brutality of high-grade techstep. Each instantly recognising a kindred spirit,
collaborations like 2008’s claustrophobic ‘Fortune’
And with Phace & Misanthrop unleashing their debut (again on Subtitles) followed before the duo cemented
collaborative LP ‘From Deep Space’ — out now on their
own Neosignal label — and Noisia’s ‘Split The Atom’ LP
following in March, that wave has built into a techstep
clarion call of proverbially tidal proportions. For those
techstep diehards left disappointed by Ed Rush &
Optical’s dated-sounding, uninspired ‘Travel The Galaxy’
Sci-fi influenced and clinically engineered, the first collaboration LP from Germany’s
d&b crusaders Phace & Misanthrop — ‘From Deep Space’ — is beaming the classic
techstep template into the future. DJmag establishes first contact to find out more…
SPACE RAIDERS
Words: ALLAN MCGRATH
044
www.djmag.com
DJ482.phace_feature.indd 44 13/1/10 15:52:04
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