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Picks Of The Week (04.06.22 - 10.06.22)

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1. Misanthrop - Universe LP [Neosignal]

Recommended if you like: Phace, Subtension, Maysev

I've been waiting for a chance to write about Misanthrop for quite a while now. A Misanthropportunity like that doesn't come every day.

Not only is he partially responsible for one of my absolute favourite labels ever, NËU, he was also one of the first acts I had seen live back when I started going to DnB raves. He isn't "just" an awesome DJ though, he's also one of the most interesting producers of this scene in my eyes. Analog, his previous album, was and still is one of my absolute favourite DnB long players, even making my "Best Album" category in this 2019 DnB year review that I made for no one in particular. Now, three years later, basically out of nowhere, Misanthrop drops another album on us. Before I start going on and on about what he brought to the table this time (spoiler: it's amazing), let's give a bit of background into our featured artist here. Inhales deeply.

Misanthrop is the artist name of Michael Bräuninger, a German producer from Stuttgart, nowadays residing in Heilbronn. After getting inspired by one of the earliest landmark releases in the electronic music scene, Kraftwerk's album The Mix, he started experimenting with music himself at around age 13. Instead of today's easy route of "just" installing a program and then hacking away at various plugins, little Michael had to manually record things and cut them together on his dad's tape machine to live out that creative urge. However, he wasn't satisfied with this "playing around" style of producing for very long and soon enough, he was regularly sitting down to properly arrange and compose tunes instead. Around this time, on a holiday in London, he discovered the wonderful world of DnB in the form of a mixtape of LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad he found in a record shop, which he quickly got obsessed with. He started buying more and more records, first simply buying every tune featured on the mixtape that he could find, then later expanding to other artists. Through these regular trips to the local record stores he met like-minded people, which got him into DJing, which lead to his first official gigs, where he could play out his own tunes to the local crowds via MiniDisc. Let me repeat: MiniDisc.

Once the internet became more readily available in more households, forums for all kinds of specific topics were cropping up left and right. Around 2000, Misanthrop was also hanging out in a lot of them, including the big ones like Future Forum, Dogs On Acid and Dsci4. While I'm sure there were a lot of great connections made and conversations held there, there is one in particular that stands out the most: On exactly these forums, Misanthrop got in contact with Phace. Don't worry if you don't know why I bolded that, in a few sentences the reasons should become apparent.

These online and offline connections lead to him releasing his first few tracks around 2002, from his debut on Armour Plated to singles on Giana Brotherz Recordings and Cologne-based label Basswerk. Since he was often mainly focusing on his work as a video editor for projects like the Soko Stuttgart Intro, ad campaigns for T-mobile and Mercedes-Benz or the movie Teenage Angst, things often got quiet around him, especially around this time. However, in 2006 he came back guns blazin' with multiple EPs on TeeBee's Subtitles label! Suddenly, all kinds of labels were knocking on his door, all wanting a piece of the Misanthro-pie. Guess who else was becoming a regular on Subtitles right before that? Correct, Phace! Told ya that would come back! In 2007 the trio (yes, Phace used to consist of two people: Florian Harres and Nicolas Ruoff) decided to combine their talents for the first time, the result being their collaboration Off Center on Shadow Law Recordings. Another few releases on Subtitles, an excursion on Hamburg-based label .shadybrain, and more collabs with Phace later, it was already time for another big change: In 2008 Phace and Misanthrop founded their very own label, Neosignal Recordings! From there on out, Neosignal became their personal place for all of their upcoming releases, whether collaborative, with each other or with legends like Noisia, or solo material. While working on new solo albums, Phace and Misanthrop, realised they were going for similar ideas and themes and since they had already gathered a ton of experience working together at this point, they decided to work together on one big collaborative album instead: From Deep Space, released in 2009.

Even though he had just released his first album, things never really slowed down for him. Not only did the following years see some instant classic releases by him and Phace, including the one and only Desert Orgy, they also extended their label responsibilities by creating NEODIGITAL, a platform for digital-only releases by them and other artists like Mefjus or Emperor, and created yet another creative outlet for their musical skills: Neosignal. No, not the label again, this time I mean the Electro group he founded with Phace, with most of its releases landing around 2013 on Noisia's VISION off-shoot Division Recordings. While they were building up Neosignal's discography and its accompanying live show, however, the DnB side of things continued growing and growing. While he had always been channelling his hate of certain aspects of society into his tunes, he was becoming way more direct in his political messaging in these times, in a way living up to his artist name more than ever. Greed Of Gain was about capitalism and all its shortcomings, Sex Sells was his and Phace's ironic spin on the more raunchy tendencies of the advertisement industry, and his 2015 Collapse EP on RAM was straight-up about societal collapse. Fun fact about his connection to RAM: Misanthrop's first ever DJ gig was with Unknown Error also known as Jim, the label manager of RAM Records!

Sure, Misanthrop was having fun putting out serious bangers, but in 2017 he wanted to challenge himself to come up with completely new sounds. He got rid of a whole bunch of his usual drum, bass and other presets and samples, essentially starting from scratch in some areas, resulting in the Blurred EP, which arguably laid the foundation for the synth-heavy (emphasis on heavy) sound Misanthrop would carve out for himself in the following years, from Slap The Ghost to Analog. Another thing that shaped the randomness of 2017: NEODIGITAL was killed off, but was reborn as one of my absolute favourite labels, NËU! I mean, how could I not love a label that gave a platform for some of my most-loved artists, like Tom Finster, Buunshin and The Caracal Project? Even in my 2019 year-in-review above I extensively talked about them!

Alright, let's finally delve into what the veteran producer has come up with for his long-awaited return. Let's take a look at his third solo LP, Universe.

We begin with the album (Misanthr)opener It's Okay, a mellow atmospheric soundtrack for our journey to this new and strange Universe. Multiple melancholic pianos are working together to create this sense of slowly being rocked back and forth, occasionally interrupted by debris hitting the outside of our ship. While quite relaxing, this contrast also results in a creeping feeling of dread slowly growing inside the listener. After two minutes we are being lead into our first stop on this intergalactic journey, Jupiter. Even though Jupiter is one of the two album tracks whose project file dates back to the Analog era, it doesn't just feel like a "left over" track. With its countless creative variations of the main theme, from incredibly vibey to minimal and steppy to a constant barrage of synths relentlessly rolling over you, it honestly feels like an evolution of the sound that has become so synonymous with Misanthrop in the last few years.

We have passed Jupiter and are now getting a better look at our Universe. After the amazing intro promises us huge things to come, with the signature wall of synths massaging our ears, singular radar pings putting us on high alert and glitchy artifacts piercing through it all, we drop into an almost mellow, very subbass-heavy bassline, continuously rolling on a set of unique set of drums. Even though everything sounds excellent, this might feel like an anticlimactic drop at first, but fret not, dear reader, another audible glitch in the system lets loose a tantalizing synth melody that is as out-of-control as it is out-of-this-world. Not as in-your-face as you might expect at first, but stunning nonetheless. Speaking of in-your-face and stunning, our ship's Alert has been activated! Man, what a tune this one is. Alert takes the mellow melodies of its predecessor and ups their energy by a thousand, times a few hundred, to the power of a million. The first time I heard this, I literally had to stop doing whatever unimportant work thing I was doing when that first delayed drop hits. I am honestly ecstatic to experience how this monstrous bass, this insane synth wall, how this absolute banger would sound like on a sound system. Fun fact: this is the second Analog-era tune!

After this explosion of energy inside our space ship, we need to Undo a lot of damage. Lab equipment is floating around in zero gravity, our oxygen alerts are constantly blaring in the destroyed areas, doors open and close randomly. Misanthrop encapsulates this weird type of floaty aftermatch with this slowly stomping experimental vibe of a track. Perfect to reset our synapses. Which is good, because next we're going to fly Into The Sun. While our computers bleep and bloop all around us to warn us about the field of asteroids we will have to navigate through, we calmly steer the ship towards our unlikely destination. Don't worry, it will all work out in the end. We continuously float on a stream of drums that could be very well be found in a lo-fi hip-hop type beat, while very lovely, very vibey melodies build themselves up, down and back up again, resulting in one hell of an incredible atmosphere. While we really tried to keep ourselves composed throughout for this maneuver, the Jitters did sneak back into our heads soon enough. Our ship is relentlessly bombarded with asteroid after asteroid, here represented by the uninterrupted avalanche of extremely heavily bitcrushed snares being bashed on our head in its own unique rhythm, while our inner pessimistic voice is personified by a whole lot of strange melodies that make you feel like you've just lost a very high-stakes game of Super Mario. Unique as hell.

Against all odds though, we made it through. This was a Triumph. Let's all make a note of how huge this success was. This highly unusual maneuver, however, got us to an equally unusual place in auditory space and time. Sure we've still got our trusty melancholic synths by our side, but they are also accompanied by a kind of drums we've never heard before and other truly weird noises. Saying the sound design is on point wouldn't do this justice, it's so far off the point that it found its very own, new and better point that it has hit bullseye on, multiple times. Speaking of strange noises, the follow-up Off-course is probably the height of oddity on our journey. Makes sense, we are completely off our initially planned course through space after all. Sonically, this is represented by some of the absolute strangest noises I've ever heard in all my time doing this, composed in a way that sounds like an otherworldly engine is constantly starting and restarting over and over again. The snares are truly mind-twisting, the rhythm is so out there that dancing to it makes you look like a straight-up lunatic, all while still managing to fit perfectly into this album's universe.

At last, we have managed to cross the intergalactic barriers this world has put in front of us and found a completely new Galaxy. Stunned, we watch the celestial bodies we could only imagine and philosophize about at home. Fittingly, this album closer is itself quite a wonder to behold. Equal parts beautiful, with Misanthrop once more crafting some genuinely magnificent melodies with his signature synth work, and menacing, thanks to an ever forward-pressing flurry of staccato drums, a rumbling bassline beat and some heavily distorted white noise. My favourite part has got to be the almost frightening growls at the start of the second drop, that part gives me shivers every single time I've listened to it so far.

Well, that got quite long didn't it? Sure, I could have kept things shorter, but I honestly think this album simply deserved an extended spotlight on here. It's not just stylistically on point and creative as hell, its production is also incredibly unique and impressively clean all throughout, while still maintaining a melodicality not many other people could match. To think that he managed to create all of this, completely on his own, without any third party samples, presets or other kinds of outside help. Truly an insane project.

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