INTERVIEW: Misanthrop Talks About His Debut Solo Album

Posted by Adam on 1st October 2016

Misanthrop‘s debut, solo album has been something that a lot of people have been looking forward to. Over the last few years his label neosignal, which he runs along side Phace, has been growing bigger and bigger with every release and has become the launch pad for the Misanthrop LP.

I had a chat with the man himself about the album writing process, political statements and some other stuff too…

Hi Michael, how are you?

Hey! I´m fine, thanks! Hope you´re well too!

All good over here thanks! It’s been a very busy year for you and neosignal as the label continues to grow exponentially, do you have any highlights from 2016 so far?

Yeah it´s quite busy so far but it feels good. I don´t really have one highlight for 2016. If I would, it would mean that there are some lowlights among the tracks we put out ;-) We at neosignal really try to make every single release a highlight for us and the artist and i think the people can feel the difference.

The big news is that you’re just about to release your debut, solo album – what made you decide now was the time to take that step?

I think one of the main reasons why I thought it´s the right time to release an album, is that I feel I´m now able to produce whatever i want to. That sounds quite obvious, but when you’ve ever sat in front of a synth or a computer you know how hard it is to create what you’ve got in your mind. First a lot of ideas happen because of your intuition or randomness, which is cool, but I want to control the chaos. My goal is to use music as the language of my creativity! But if you don´t know the vocabulary you’re not able to speak the language, that is why it took so long.

Did you write all the tracks specifically for the album or is it combination of new and existing music that you had already started.

I think ‘Minimalinski’ is the only track that existed before the album was started. All other tracks are new tracks solely created for the album. I had a rough idea what tunes i would want to have on the album, soIi wrote down a list with a rough description. My goal was to write two layouts for each description. Basically i had a pool of around 25-28 tracks to choose my 13 favorites.

Buy: iTunes / neosignal Shop



With ‘Antimachine’ you’ve taken the opportunity to make a political statement – can you tell us abit about what you’re trying to say and what it means to you.

I always try to make a political statement, sometimes more, sometimes a bit less noisy. During the time i worked on “Antimachine“ I watched a lot of documentaries about gentrification or at least i tried to find a lot of information about it. Some of the information I got made me really angry. I thought it would be a good thing to at least do a track about it, to vent my angriness. Then i found that sample of a guy who spoke from the viewpoint of a politician in a satire about gentrification. Since that moment the visual content was born in my mind instantly and i just had to roll it out on my computer.

Basically i want to provoke people and make them think about a certain problem. Even when they don´t agree that´s cool, because we all have different opinions.

But to be quite on something that makes you angry, is the wrong way. That is why i´m doing it!

Do you have a personal favourite track from the album that you’re the happiest to see being released?

I like Antimachine a lot, because the visual concept and the vibe of the music work so well together. But i can´t really name a single track of the album, i´m pretty proud of the fact that the album is diverse in my opinion. That was my goal and i think it worked out.

Buy: iTunes / neosignal Shop



Was the album writing process any easier or harder than your 2009 album with Phace as you worked on your own this time?

I wouldn’t say “harder“, I would simply call it more work, because I wanted to produce all tracks and the visual design by myself.

Thanks for your time mate and congrats on the album – is there anything else you want to tell us about?

Thank you very much ! :-)