Drum & Bass music has undergone some fascinating transformations and evolutions during lockdown this past year, bringing forward many new talents and sounds such as Maysev.

He's been on our radar for nearly a year now, gaining our attention early on with some impressive WIP’s and unfinished bits which showcased his tremendous technical nuance as well as undeniable originality. Maysev has been making a name for himself in the scene, appearing on Neosignal’s imprint NËU, as well as receiving a remarkable amount of airtime on the esteemed VISION Radio.

With his refined and progressive approach to Drum & Bass, it's clear that this artist has much to offer; in way of unique arrangement, complex textures, and beautiful contemplative melodies intertwined masterfully with gnarly driven grooves. Maysev’s musical career has only just begun but his unique contribution to the Drum & Bass scene is already beginning to make itself evident.

We are absolutely thrilled to premiere Maysev's first self-released track titled 'Just Friends'. With this interview, we endeavor to learn a little about the process behind making this tune, as well as his other productions, and how he got together with Neosignal with some insights into his own unique journey along the way. In addition to this, we’re extremely fortunate to also include a chat with the creator of the incredibly eye-catching cover art and animation created by the talented Hydrae, as well as some never before seen work in progress shots of the marvelous artwork..

It’s humbling to consider how far you’ve come since we met last year on Discord. If I recall correctly, we connected after All172Things posted one of your IDs, which was soon after played by Secula in his Neosignal mix. We got to talking and eventually hopped into a chat with a bunch of other folks to share music, that tune of yours eventually came to be Tunnel Drive! And here we are today, seeing that track Tunnel drive on the NËU EP really feels like things have come full circle, it's been such a pleasure keeping up with you during this time dude.

Thanks, man! Yeah, I did not expect it to turn out like that at all, if you had told me that when we first met I wouldn’t have believed you. When Matens and I made the track initially, it was just as a goof really. We wanted to make a club tune because at the time, I didn't know how to make club music and I wanted to prove to him that I could do it. The main synth, the main patterns, and main rhythm were taken from a really old thing he had made originally 2 or 3 years ago and then were never touched again. And we tried making a track out of it. I guess the track kind of worked in the end because it’s out on Neosignal/Nëu now.

How do you know Matens? You seem to have a lot of tracks and WIPs together.

Yeah, we actually are working on 3 more right now that are not released. We got very close after meeting on Discord during covid but now we have met in person a couple times now. He’s from Rostock, Germany, near the Berlin / Hamburg area.

Very cool, and how do you know Secula, your other collaborator on the NËU release?

We met during covid as well through IMANU’s Patreon Discord and we instantly bonded and connected. We started making a tune, I think the first tune we made was in May of 2020. Mostly it was his work, I didn’t know so much about making music back then. We’ve gotten closer and closer and now we’re best friends. We met in real life 2 times. I went out there to Vienna to visit him once and then again, went out there for the birthday party of Markus Wingz. We were all going and met there; IMANU, Hydrae, William Light, Secula, myself and some others. It was f***ing crazy.

You said that birthday party was your first club experience right? How was that? First time in a club being surrounded by so many sick musicians and even being on stage and getting to play a few tunes out nonetheless. Pretty wild!

Yeah man, it was absolutely crazy! It’s kind of sad that I’ve only just had my very first club experience but there aren’t that many clubs around here playing that kind of music. If I wanted to go to a club playing drum and bass music I would have to travel 300-400 kilometers and that just never happened. And during covid all this time as well, everything has been closed. I kind of blindly produced club music without really knowing what a club is like. It was eye-opening to hear how sound works in a live setting, it’s completely different from listening at home in your studio, and you have to experience it otherwise you can’t know for sure.

How do you feel now that you’ve checked it out? Has it changed your view about anything or what type of music you might want to make next?

Yes definitely. For one, it changed my view about the simplicity of music because the tunes that work best are the most simple in arrangement and sound selection, that are not overly complex or too stuffed with sounds and sound design. The simple tunes work the best and I noticed I have to be very careful about things like having a boring low end, having subs go for like 8 bars straight are boring and no one will dance to that. So I learned a lot about danceability and some mixdown stuff but mostly arrangement and sound selection.

It's interesting you say that because I have always found your stuff to be somewhat contemplative, something you can sit down and listen to. So it's cool to hear that the club experience has opened you up to more danceable sort of stuff. I guess when you can blend both worlds that makes a good tune.

That’s what I’m working on right now, it’s really hard to find that style and to manifest it but I’m working on it.

Are there any producers you look up to that achieve that kind of blend between dancefloor-ability and technical exploration?

Yeah, 100%, The Caracal Project, of course, is one of my favorites. I saw him in Berlin two weeks ago and it was amazing! He played almost last basically, going on at 6am and it was an insane set, completely nuts. Another producer that I think works really well, we played some of the tunes in Vienna, Djordje Missin. His tunes, the unreleased ones that nobody knows of. Can’t even imagine how hard this stuff goes. And of course Secula and Matens, I know every single tune of these guys and I’ve gotten to hear them live now and they work really well.

Do you think you’ll be producing mainly Drum & Bass for the next while?

Yeah, I just love it still and hearing it in a club kind of reinforced that. I was kind of afraid I wouldn’t like it live because it's so loud and fast but it felt nice, it felt like the right thing still. I think I’m just gonna stick to that because it's fun and it makes you push yourself because it's hard to do most of the time and you can carry that stuff that you learn to other genres afterward. I tried making Dubstep yesterday and it came out pretty cool I guess.

Right on man. Can you tell me what inspires your sound design? Your textures are super unique and far out. I'm sure you spend a lot of time working on them.

Yes, the sound design most of the time starts with a synth of sorts or a Kontakt Instrument. I’m just putting in a chord progression and I process it wildly to see what I get out of it. It's very synth-based, it's not really random because it's planned but basically I bounce out a lot of samples, put them in my sample library, and use them later on.

What other plugins do you like to use? How do you achieve that distortion?

I use Tantrum by Creative Intent for textures but mostly it lies in the form of mixing in general. Secula and I do a very extreme form of mixing with the limiter on from the start so everything goes in there completely hot, while the more traditional approach would be to start with low levels and then bring everything up at the end. We do it completely flipped, we start with high levels and kind of limit them down. Some of the distortion comes from gaining a sound then clipping it afterward and sometimes it's just another distortion like Fabfilter Saturn or some plugins William Light offers but hasn’t released yet, we use those a lot. Most of the time the mixing is part of the idea, I don’t split the mixing from the track creation so it's a very fast workflow and we do everything at once basically.

Very cool. I’ve noticed on a lot of your tunes the 2nd drop usually has a sick breakdown with a bpm change that makes for a whole different vibe, and really allows a lot of these textural nuances to stand out. Is that something you like to work with?

Yeah because I struggle sometimes with creating a basic second drop that has just one variation and I get very bored of that quickly so I kind of flip it around completely, most of the time. I’ll take the original, use some sounds from the first drop, put them in the second half, maybe change the bpm, maybe make it halftime, maybe do something completely different. For “Just Friends”, the Rendah Mag premiere, I took the 2nd drop and put everything in triplets so the tempo wouldn’t have to change, but it sounds like it does. It still stays on the grid with everything, and you can still mix it, but it sounds like it's a different tempo. Things like that keep it interesting.

Very cool. How did your first-ever self-release 'Just Friends' come to be?

I started this song in May of this year after I finished the tunes for my NËU release. I wanted to do a heavy melodic track because I was still trying to perfect that sound. I started with Massive X, the plugin by Native Instruments. I put down a chord progression, that's actually the main chord progression of the tune now, and I made a first drop that sounded completely different from the final one that you hear now. I have a very funny plugin called MRhythmizer by Melda Productions that I kind of overused back then. My friends always make fun of that plugin when they hear my name basically haha. It's essentially a time manipulating plugin; it chops up everything you input and puts everything in different places and you can basically tell it when to play a certain part of the sample that got input, this way you can manipulate the rhythms really easily. So I put that on the chord progression and selected the presets, which sounds exactly like it does in the finished version now. I automated that, made it different for some parts of the track, and that's how the main idea got to roll I think.

What’s the meaning of the track to you?

It’s actually pretty sad. The title 'Just Friends' comes literally from love that doesn’t come back from another person. Unrequited love. You see that in the animations as well because I told Hydrae that I wanted a figure or person in the artwork. I didn’t tell him what it should look like but he nailed the posture and expression of the person perfectly. In the teasers you see two people talking to each other, merging into one. This just expanded the whole meaning in my opinion, because before that you couldn’t be quite sure what it meant, but with the artwork, it becomes quite clear!

How’d you come to work with Hydrae for the animation and artwork on 'Just Friends'? They’re absolutely wicked!

I met him on the IMANU Discord about a year ago. We kind of started becoming friends when Secula started his Patreon, that’s when we really connected and became friends. We had conversations and worked on music as well. None of that music is coming out any time soon but we are working together on some stuff. It's a lot of fun because he’s a great musician and graphics designer, it's kind of nuts how talented he is. I approached him about making the artwork because he had already wanted to work with me on something, and when I told him about it he instantly had an idea and he finished the artwork in like 2 days actually, animations and everything! We only had to make some slight changes. I gave him complete freedom, I sent him the track and the meaning of the track, and he kind of went along and worked on it.

Very cool. So your NËU release was definitely big for you, can you tell us how that came to be? How’d you link up with the legends Misanthrop and Phace?

Your very first release feels special I guess. I don’t know because I only had that first release but it felt special. How I got connected with Neosignal was actually pretty straightforward. I had a lot of tunes ready, like 10 or so; and I showed them to Dorian (Secula) and he said to send them to Phace’s personal email. Apparently, he talked to Phace briefly about me or something and said I should send it to him directly. I did that, and after about two weeks he responded and said they would like to work with me on an EP.

After we got in contact, he picked these four tunes for the final even though 'Realize' was only half a tune, the 2nd half didn’t exist. The mixdown was different, I was surprised he took that tune because it seems like a really far stretch to take a half-finished tune. 'Tunnel Drive' was finished I guess, just the mixdown was lacking. 'All Out' was finished, that one was the first one I finished. 'Koram' I started with Dorian in November of 2020 but I finished it in May when I turned in the masters and it came out in September so there was a lot of waiting time in between. Also, I was really really surprised by the artwork, I wasn’t expecting it to be this good. I was pleasantly surprised! The color scheme seems to go with the sounds on the album. It's bright and a lot of the album, even though it has gnarly grooves. There’s a lot of really sick emotional, deep synth work. Is that something you aim towards?

I think it just happens. Every time I write a chord progression it kind of just goes in that direction. And yeah it's very synth-based like the whole NËU EP is basically mostly synths. Very few real samples except for “Realize” there's a bunch of real stuff in there. I’m kind of shifting away from that because the track always needs something to ground it when it’s that synthetic so a vocal or a guitar sample, something that grounds it by being real. That’s the only thing I would have changed about the NËU EP, I think the rest I would have done exactly like that.

Do you define the genre of music you make at all? Do you feel like your music falls into the, for lack of a better word; 'Post Neuro Drum & Bass' wave of artists emerging out of lockdown and IMANU’s Discord community?

I started doing this Drum & Bass thing in 2019 before I even knew IMANU’s music. I always kind of used guitar samples or some chord stuff but I didn’t know I was doing it. It was a subconscious thing because I came from chord-based music, and I didn’t know I wanted to do bass music so I kind of put that together and that’s why I started to listen to IMANU because it perfectly fit my taste when his stuff came out. It was spot on and I was instantly hooked. I joined the Patreon as soon as it opened, and it kind of started from there. It was kind of obvious to go down that road, or at least it felt obvious to me. When the Patreon started, the mood in the air was that drum and bass is open again, everyone can experiment and do new things.

It's been a crazy ride seeing everyone grow through IMANU’s Patreon.

Yeah, there’s a huge networking aspect as well through the Patreon. Now it's kind of closing down again because the labels have kind of found themselves, everything has formed and now the sound or genre is turning into something solid again, kind of like before IMANU blew it all wide open. Now I think it's getting harder and harder for newcomers to get their names out there with this new type of drum and bass because there's a lot of it nowadays. The risk at the moment is to play it safe because there’s an established sound in this new genre/subgenre thing. If you just play it safe and stick to that, I think it's a shame because there’s so much more you can do. I mean I did make tunes where I played it safe you could say, but I did this because I’m still in the process of learning how to make music, and I still have a lot to learn, I’m not finished at all. You should think about where you can take what you learn, and push it into territories where it hasn’t been pushed before.

You’re able to fine-tune your technical skills within this genre and it supports you in being more creative and going forward into new things. Do you have any new hybrid genre-bending music in the works?

Genre-bending... Actually, the next thing to come out after this self-release with Rendah Mag is gonna be two tunes that are not Drum & Bass. It's one tune in 150 and one tune in 160. I don’t really think it has anything to do with Drum & Bass except for sonics and sound design maybe and other little stuff. One tune only has a clap for a snare but not like a Tech Drum & Bass clap but just a real actual clap that's been processed. The other tune is filled with breaks and I think they both have really strong vibes, but they definitely deviate a lot from Drum & Bass. That's all I can say for now about that, but these tracks will be out soon. I talked to some other labels and have sent out a lot of stuff to labels but there’s nothing concrete in the works yet.

What labels would you like to release with in the future?

I would really love to do something for VISION, I don’t know if it's gonna happen, that's a dream. I think it's almost everybody’s dream to release on VISION.

Yeah, your music has been featured on VISION Radio though so that's a start!

Yeah, I had almost all the NËU tracks except for “Koram” on there and the free download remix I did of 'Here With Me' by YAANO & SLWDWN as well. This tune was actually my first release and it performed pretty well. It's got about 10K plays or something on Soundcloud which is really weird, I did not expect it to turn out like that for my first release, it was very surprising. That remix actually brought me some cool connections since then, people have reached out and messaged me. Now I’m working with someone who I really respect and enjoy a lot, it's really sick.

Hell yeah man, that's awesome to hear. Thank you so much for your insights and time. Are there any lesser-known artists that you want to shout out as we wrap up this interview?

Yes, thank you for having me! 100%, I have to shout out Secula who has been so supportive of my work all this time, his stuff is amazing and only getting better. William Light for sure, he’s gonna release some really sick stuff. Pepill, another one of my buddies. Velle is one person whose music I’ve always loved as music as well, formerly known as Nesium. Of course, I have to name Matens, I just love everything he touches. One more guy I would like to shout out is NÕUS AKA Mo Harper, a server buddy as well who has just begun putting out some great music.

Mikołaj 'Hydrae' Połonowiczhas compiled a tremendous portfolio for himself in recent years. With credentials ranging from visual productions for IMANU x Black Sun Empire, Buunshin, as well as some terrific artwork prints for YAANO & Secula, Hydrae’s tastefully aesthetic visions have already begun to make a distinct mark within the drum and bass community, but this is only the beginning. Surely this talented young creative won’t be limited to this single lane, as his creative output runs through a wide variety of styles and genres, it's hard to pinpoint his focus. From Drum & Bass and drone music to conceptual art and animation, Hydrae continues to make his voice heard, as he manipulates a multitude of mediums to serve as tools for his creativity and unique expressions.

Thanks for joining us man. We really admire your work and when Alex/Maysev told me you were doing artwork for the release we were stoked to hear that. Tell us about yourself, are you attending UNI right now?

Thanks, man! I am from Poland, I am 21 years old. I do not attend school anymore but work instead as a freelancer. Have a lot of projects on my own for 2021.

Any inspiring stuff in Poland to your work or do you find most of your inspiration online?

For inspiration, I don’t really find it in the native life where I’m at. I most often look for it with people like Ryoji Ikeda who is a Japanese artist who makes live audiovisuals. He’s incredibly good with that. And some people like Beeple, who's been turning his work into NFTs. He's great as well. Those are two people who I go to for quick composition and colors and inspiration/ideas.

Have you ever shown your music in a live setting before?

No, but I’m actually working on it right now. I have some people on my side that I’m planning to do it for and it’s probably going to be in the works pretty soon.

A lot of time digital art you just see through your screen or on your phone, being able to see it in a gallery setting does a lot for it. Can’t wait to see how you’ll showcase your work.

One work that I was really stoked on this year was actually for Secula & YAANO’s release on DIVIDID, 'Blinded Memories' and 'Summon' which I was actually making posters for and they’re still up. So yeah these came out sick, I’m really proud of them.

Yeah, these ones are wicked! So you use Cinema 4D and Octane Render mostly?

Yes, for now, I mostly use MAXON Cinema 4D and Octane Render as my main software to push out stuff into creative works like artworks.

When did you start messing around with this software, have you always been a digital artist, or have you done traditional stuff in the past?

For artworks themselves, I’ve always been into digital artwork. I’ve been doing 2D Motion Graphics, 3D animations, and stuff for almost ten years now actually. I’ve never done physical drawings or anything like that, I’ve always worked digitally, like mashing and stuff.

Wow, well that explains why your work is at the level it is at already for your age. Do you feel the software you use helps you bring out visions? You have a unique style, is there any sort of genre or style you would categorize it as?

I don't see any form to my arts, I think that's like it can't be set into one genre or word. I look for stuff like brutalism in architecture, stuff like abstract lines, and stuff like this, I try to combine them in like an emotional setting, that leads ultimately to the end product.

Do you put intention or meaning behind the artwork that you make?

With some of them, yes. For example, in the one that I did for Alex; 'Just Friends' we talked about the music itself and we listened to it a couple of times together. We were even thinking “What if we make the artwork black and white because of the heavy tone of the tune?” But at the same time considering the name itself, as well as the meaning behind it, we decided; “No, let's give it some color, let's give it a good setting that can't really be described - like is there anything behind the figures?” The goal is mainly to provoke emotions from the end-user so that they’ll listen to the tune or even look at the artwork and be like - I actually can fit this artwork to the music itself and vice/versa. That's what I want to achieve with my artwork for this track.

Was there any theme at all you were working with?

Basically, Alex and I sat down, gathered some reference images in the form of photography and other artwork to inspire what we wanted to do. We picked our own color palettes after we looked at the black and white rough. It's hard to describe a general theme or anything that promoted the artwork, it kind of just flowed. Sometimes I can sit on the artwork for 20 hours and it doesn't make me feel like literally anything but with this artwork, for example, I was able to work on it for 5 hours, have it as a draft and I start really getting into and like feeling something that is gonna come out of it.

How did you connect with Alex originally, what brought you two together on this?

We originally connected through IMANU’s server on Discord whenever that started. I became friends with all of the people there which has been great. I even got to meet Alex and them in Vienna a month ago which was sweet! It was an amazing time. Alex and I just got together as friends, we just started talking on a daily basis, we help each other with some of the stuff and that’s where we’re at right now.

Yeah, that server really did a lot to bring people together and push the scene forward. Let me ask you, did you know from the beginning you all wanted to make an animation instead of a still image? And do you think the piece holds up as a still in its own way? To me, it looks like the animation and the still can both hold up as two different pieces.

We started by just doing the still of my artwork and then we started thinking about the whole package to like get it promotion assets, etc. Instead of simply zooming in and out or whatever, we wanted to do an actual animation. With a different angle for one setting, one with the OG setting, the way the art artwork was in the beginning and then adding some wires behind it to show that something is behind the wall-like light in front of the characters. I think it still holds up as just a still image. But I think a complete animation, for Spotify and the promotional assets, are doing as good as the still image, and certainly are artwork in their own right.

Basically yeah. From everything that was done after the artwork had been finished, I didn’t really have to change much besides the colors and the camera angles, and the composition itself. I animated the wires in the video itself by hand, other than that it's just smart camera pans and actually setting up the camera itself for different angles. The artwork is actually two people standing right beside each other, and we just thought about how we can actually show the other person behind this first-person because you can’t really see it from the still image. You can kinda see the 2nd person’s hands on the edges, but we wanted to make that more clear, so we took the different camera angles to show their posture, to convey what we wanted, that's pretty much it. There's nothing really hard about it if you know your ways about compositions, lighting, and how a camera actually works which is really important in 3D digital art then you actually can do anything that you desire, which is really cool.

On this piece as well as the YANNO & Secula pieces, I really love the texturing on figures, why do you give them this effect? Is there any purpose to it?

I just think that if I would not use certain filters, it would just look too CGI - If you know what I mean, just too clean. I like to add as many imperfections as I can to an image that can symbolize that it's something other than just like “Oh I took a picture of something” which yeah, OK. But is there any story to it? For instance, if I see cracks on the figure, I would say that's used, it's been aged, and it's been a while since someone maintained it. For example, that is another way to tell a story for me, within the digital realm of doing whatever I want with my art.

Makes me think of those classical greek type sculptures that have been worn and damaged over time, the texture gives them a personality and history. I also feel like the rough texture in the visual art reflects Maysev’s music in this track in a lot of ways, very clean but also gritty, rough, and texturized. Do you see any connection there?

Yeah there's always gotta be a contrast between something that looks clean but at the same time, you can perceive that something is gonna be not really as smooth as you wanted it to be. So for example, Drum & Bass is a genre that is going right now within my group of my friends and is doing great by the way. It's just that you can't really tell a story with just a smooth image, you need to have some grit on it, you have to actually texturize the artwork which I love to do.

Yeah, I fully agree with that. Better than having it super smooth. Can you tell us a bit about your studio MCCXVI? Is that just an online portfolio for you or a platform for bigger projects?

I’m trying to get it to be an actually registered studio right now because I’m thinking about moving to the Netherlands next year. So I’m going to try to figure that out. MCCXVI is a platform where I can collaborate with all of my friends and hopefully present them to a bigger picture for example if I’m going to make a short movie that is going to be like high stakes for me and other people that want to show off their work then it's just gonna be the platform where which everything is just gonna be compiled together. You’ll be able to pick it apart and see who's part of it, a part of the art, and who is working behind the scenes. Stuff like that to give people the opportunity to get in there and see for yourself those involved in what you like.

Creating a freelance studio is certainly a great way to expose people to different artists, in different ways, beyond just drum and bass. Last question, do you have any new projects of your own you’d like to mention or anyone you want to shout out?

I think, for now, I’m working on my album for 2022 with a couple of names you’ve already seen on the Rendah Mag and a couple of other places. For visual arts, I’m also doing a short film as I said before which is probably gonna be in the 4th quarter of 2022, hopefully. I’m going for that release date. People to shout out; the whole KBZ zone! You know who you are!! Jon/IMANU and other people, you know who you are. For people to be aware of, people in my close circle; like Dorian/Secula, he’s got pretty nice stuff coming out pretty soon so watch out for it and of course Alex Maysev, big love to him. Really happy for people to get to know who he is!