It’s clearly no secret that the forthcoming EP from Phace & Mefjus on Neosignal is being pre-drooled over by neurofunk freaks and the drum and bass scene at large, but luckily the wait is almost over. Well, not exactly; the drop date is still almost a month away on September 1. Phace and Mefjus have both been touring heavily, which means they and all their German and Dutch friends have been playing the tunes on the Wastemen EP out, while Neosignal are unfairly holding onto the release. Luckily, however, they are slowly leaking a couple of the tracks, and “Malmaison,” premiered right here in this very post, certainly lives up to the hype.
To say that the beat on “Malmaison” is jumpy and steppy would be an understatement, but it’s everything that Neosignal fans have come to expect from the label. The sound design on such a jumpy beat and such high-sounding bass synths seems completely unachievable, yet here it is, probably weeks of work compressed into a three minute thirty second track.
Beyond the beat and the brassy, neuro-styled bass, “Malmaison” seems somewhat sparse, with a menacing vocal sample in the break, there is a lot happening in the spaces between beat, bass and break. This is really what makes a Neosignal track a Neosignal track. True to form, the complexity in a Phace and Mefjus collab comes in the second and third and fourth listen to a track like “Malmaison” as all the elements and subtleties of the track slowly reveal themselves. It’s a thinker for sure, as is the rest of the EP.
Neuro fans will have to wring their hands for a little longer in order to get said hands on Wastemen, which is out in full on September 1. The EP can be pre-ordered via Neosignal by clicking here.