Sad news bellowed out from the Division HQ chimney late last month as Toulouse trio Signs announced they were parting ways.
After five years of releasing on some of the biggest labels in the game – Ram, Eatbrain, Shogun, Bad Taste, Neodigital, Piranha Pool, Plasma Audio and Vandal as well as Noisia’s Division – the halftime heaving trio comprising Julien, Niko and Lutin are all now neck deep in new projects and collaborations of their own and have decided to bring their project to an end.
To bid us a collaborative adieu they’ve dropped the stinking six tracker Naegleria EP. Packing some of the most brazen and experimental designs they’ve ever done as Signs, it’s a powerful au revoir… And a big fat bonjour to the future. Here’s what happens next.
Signs! What happened? You all seemed so vibey when we last interviewed you. This is sad news…
Hey man. Well you know we are still vibey! Each of us going on different ways doesn’t mean we’re not vibey anymore hahah! Don’t worry we are still vibey, and yeah a lot of people told us that this is sad news. But we are seeing it from a different angle. This is a new beginning!
Was there a particular moment or release where you all realised Signs wasn’t gonna to be forever?
Well to be honest we don’t think there was a particular moment where we realised that. It’s been something more progressive, more of a logical progression for the three of us because we’d all started working on our own projects more. Signs taught us all a lot of things and we knew it was the right time to switch to some new perspectives. We all felt like that we wanted new starts.
Tell us about this final EP!
Well, first of all, the writing process of this EP took us a long time. We started nearly a year ago and have been shaping tightly with the Noisia and Division guys. It’s been a long process. They pushed us a lot musically on this one and asked us to change some parts and try different angles. It’s been hard work! To go in a deeper musical talk about that EP, we would say that the release’s purpose was to have no purpose. It’s just to experiment, feel free and be creative and bring many flavours. It’s like a picture of different bass music genres but all written at drum & bass tempo. Except for Molecular which is 130BPM.
So what comes next? What are all of your plans?
Oh you wanna know everything? Haha. Okay…. Let’s start with Julien. He is now working on his own solo project call Ypno and also on his collab project Diggerz alongside July Diggerz. On the other hand, Niko and Lionel wanted to work on a collab project together. They’re deep into now and it goes by the name of Cecil Hotel and will cover many genres of bass music in one project. Expect some news about it real soon.
Lionel has also set up an artist management company, having got more involved in the management side of the Signs project. The company is called Touché.E and is run with Lola Katre20 who ran a lot of the Signs communications. And also Niko is working hard on his new collab project alongside The Clamps. This will be announced real soon and, as you can expect from Niko, as he is quite a busy person, he has his solo project Opsen and does a lot of sound design work too.
Nice. This is a time for reflection… What has this whole experience taught you?
Signs taught us a lot! Musically first, but also a lot on other angles like communication, strategy, promotion and a lot of things about the music Industry! We thought that now, after this final Division EP, was the right time to split and take a new start and push our own projects. As you can see we’re all on a busy one.
Once again, we wanna thank everyone that’s been part of the journey and have supported us and encouraged us all along the way. There are too many to name . A special one goes out to Division and to the Noisia guys though for pushing us a lot on this project. We wanna send out some love and some massive shouts to the fans and for all their support from the beginning of the story. Big up UKF… We’ll see you again soon!
Big up Signs: Naegleria is out now
