Big news from Phace & Misanthrop’s Neosignal HQ today as they announce that their six year old label Neodigital, the label that played a key role in the early careers of both Emperor and Mefjus, will cease to exist… And brand new label NËU will take its place.
Still fuelled by the same new-talent championing focus and attitude of Neodigital, and still as likely to be as sporadic with its less-is-more release approach. The big different is that it’s not a sister label to Neosignal but stands on its own as an exciting, independent new label with a direction as firm and focused as its roots.
All we know is that NËU will launch on December 1 and has been teased by this video…
We sent them a few questions to find out more…
So just to clarify; is NEODIGITAL completely RIP?
Yes it is. It’s time for something NËU! We came to the conclusion that one of the initial reasons why we started NEODIGITAL back in the days (which was to solely focus on digital-only releases for that outlet) simply became obsolete. Nowadays it’s pretty standard to run releases through digital channels only and to just do physical products for special occasions and when there is enough demand. The other reason why we started NEODIGITAL was that we wanted it to be a channel for new talent but also a second channel for us to be creative with. We wanted NEODIGITAL to be more of a musical playground. And after all the past years we realized we need to reconfigure the playground to still feel comfortable in and to also make it an even more comfortable place for our artists. We needed to give that second channel a new soul and a more current and updated definition. There is nothing worse than an idle state and for us change is an essential asset to stay inspired.
This is much more than a rebranding exercise then…
Correct, it’s a total fresh-up. The name is new, the whole design is new and the label is positioned way more independent even though it is as connected to NEOSIGNAL as NEODIGITAL was. NEODIGITAL always felt to people somewhat more as NEOSIGNAL’s little sister though, but for us it never meant that. For us it was as important as NEOSIGNAL. And we now simply decided to put that child on own two feet, give it a new dress, to call it a different name and to give it a new twist, whereas the core values will somewhat remain the same – to push new music, to support new talent, but also to highlight music from established acts and to also have more playground on the fashion side of things.
NEODIGITAL was never particularly prolific but the discography is spotless with early tunes from both Mefjus and Emperor. It felt like you were rebuilding the momentum last year with the Eurofunk EPs. So what inspired this decision?
The NEODIGITAL back catalogue will surely stay available and will always be a part of the NEOSIGNAL family, so it’s not like the whole content will vanish into nirvana. We had a great time with the label, and we luckily managed to be a stepping stone for some cool artists. We just reached the end of the road for NEODIGITAL as it was and felt the need to start something updated within the same mindset. The Eurofunk Series was really fun for us too, and the good thing is we can bring it back anytime on the new label too.
Will NËU be more prolific / regular with its output?
We will hold it as we did before. We are no big fans of penetrating something or causing a constant noise level just so we stick out at the currently very busy digital music market. We do not want to follow that approach. Everything should happen in its own time when there is good reason to tell something. As we re-structured the label also in terms of backend, we do hope we will need less time to get a release out to the streets though. We want NËU to be faster, to be more flexible, and we want to try new things how we get releases out and how we handle the PR. Having non-stop output is still not our purpose why we do the re-launch. There are other things which are way more important to us, such as quality control and interesting content.
What comes next? What can you tell us?
For the start we plan a series of singles. We kind of fell in love with releasing music in a single format again, it seems to be a forgotten medium of dance music releases. Just two tracks, no long PR lead times, we can be fast on getting the music out there. So at the moment we’re looking at starting the label with three singles, the first will be available December 1 and the second will drop mid or end of January, the third one is not yet completely official but hopefully soon. We are pretty excited about giving birth to this baby. NËU website coming soon too!
Follow NEOSIGNAL for more NËU details: Instagram / Soundcloud / YouTube / Facebook
Got some music you think might suit NËU? Email them: neu.music.demo@gmail.com
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