By now you should all have acquainted yourselves with Neosignal’s Space Gsus EP.
Released on Monday, the seven track electronic expedition develops the motifs and production muscle first displayed on the duo’s Raum Und Zeit LP. UKF was the first channel to premiere the release with the insane Space Gsus video
An apt – if a little mindblowing – window into the creative minds of Neosignal (Flo Phace & Michael Misanthrop in case you’re not aware), Space Gsus marks the start of a new live voyage that involved six months of intense creativity mapping visuals to every beat and every element of their show.
The hard work has paid off… As you’ll see from this video we are proud to premiere. If it doesn’t make you want to drop everything, book the next flight to Hamburg and wait outside their studio until they announce more live dates (so far they’ve only done two) then nothing will.
Intense, right? We couldn’t let this video slip without finding out more: Like who is Space Gsus? Are they happy with comparisons to Kraftwerk and where the dickens can we experience this ourselves?
Everyone is Space Gsus. To us Space Gsus makes the world a better place by doing small things or wonders, like helping grannies with their shopping.
Watching this video you can’t help but make Kraftwerk parallels. One – you’re German. Two – it’s very mechanic and brutal. Three – you move in sync in the shadows, ensuring the emphasis is on the sound and visuals and not as you two as individuals… Was that the intention? And is it cool to compare you to Kraftwerk or a bit much?
Flo: Anyone is free to compare us to whom or what he or she likes. We cannot control that. We of course do not want to be seen as a copy of something as we feel we do something own. Who honestly wants to be a copy?
In general nowadays it is extremely hard to come up with something so groundbreaking new that you think you have never seen or heard it before. We live in a fractal society these days, pretty much everyone or everything is a copy of a copy already. The devil is in the detail and its interpretation though. We try to do our own thing and try to fuse and transform the sound of different music genres we like into our own musical vision and esthetics. I feel we are more a digitally punked out breed in comparison to the more old-school sounding electronica bands.
I personally have been a fan of Kraftwerk since I was a young boy. They were my first contact to electronic music. Playing abroad a lot I learned that any German electronic music project internationally has to cope with contending against Kraftwerk, as they are the role models and root of electronic music and always have been there first. It’s probably the same with the Beatles for rock in the UK.
Michael: I think you always have to swallow this pill when you’re a German electronic music artist I guess… haha… Of course we are both influenced by them – who isn’t? – but musically we are doing quite different things. Personally I like their concept of the de-personalization and the denial of star cult, but I think our goal was to perform an audiovisual journey and therefore it´s quite obvious that you don´t necessarily need to watch us turning knobs.
I remember evenings I went to bed I shut my eyes and still saw frames of pictures flashing for an hour.
So the show took a while to create…
Flo: We spent five to six months on the whole development of the audio/visual live show. The most work intensive part was the creation and syncing of the visuals. In terms of visual content we did have support from Boompje Studios in Amsterdam, who have been really supportive within the whole creative and technical process.
As we had a pretty clear vision of what we visually wanted though, we still had to create much content on our own. Also we both programmed the whole visual synchronization on our own. I remember evenings I went to bed I shut my eyes and still saw frames of pictures flashing for an hour. It was worth it though. Like with anything else in life, if you put all your energies and efforts into something, the result will most likely make you feel truly happy and fulfilled.
Michael: It was really a lot of work and it reminded me a bit about the post-production phase of a movie… sort of. With my video- editing background I’m used to on-point editing and flashy frames, but doing this for nearly six months was quite an experience. Nevertheless we had a clear vision of what we wanted it to look and feel like, so it did not feel like half a year.
Why did the live show debut in Toulouse rather than your hometown of Hamburg?
Flo: The timing simply was perfect, and also the Bikini in Toulouse is one of our favorite venues in Europe with a great audio and visual infrastructure. But we also did a hometown premiere show in Hamburg two weeks later too.
What kit are you using to perform?
Flo: We tried to make sure that on stage everything runs as smooth and stable as possible and that all potential failure sources are as tiny as possible. We also made sure we can control everything by ourselves, so we do not need to take a big amount of gear and additional visual staff on tour. In regards to equipment, we run two Laptops, one for Audio with Ableton Live and the other one for Visuals with Resolume Arena. Both Laptops are connected via midi. We perform and control the whole set with a Livid Ohm RGB, a Novation Launchpad and through Live Control II via Lemur on an iPad.
Michael: Our setup is very well prepared and programmed and therefore people might think this is a programmed trigger show, but it´s not. There’s always enough creative freedom for us to improvise and interact during the performance.
So who is Space Gsus? And what’s with the crazy spelling of his name?
Flo: Everyone is Space Gsus. To us Space Gsus makes the world a better place by doing small things or wonders, like helping grannies with their shopping. No big magic and no religion included here. The name came up randomly during a writing session. First we did not know how to call the track. It just sounded like Space Gsus, and that’s why it’s called that way.
Michael: Space Gsus is a bit of a nonsense/dada word-creation, but it feels right if you listen to the title track. I also like the fact that this is EP is not too brainy, conventional but more based on decisions that feels right at that certain moment. Also, this…
Most importantly; any more live dates to shout about now? This NEEDS to be experienced!
Flo: We have nothing concretely lined up at this stage, as we first wanted to focus on getting the record out. But we just recently signed to a new booking agency and try to take the show to wherever people would like to see it. For any booking inquiries please get in contact with kevin@circletalentagency.com for North America and with lee@uaagency.co.uk for Europe/Rest of World
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