NOISIA
SHOCK AND AWE
WORDS | Cyrus Shahrad
PHOTOGRAPHY | Antim Photography
Having carved an unmistakable niche of darkside
credibility and dancefloor destruction since arriving in
2003, Dutch trio Noisia’s stock has never been higher. With
a FabricLive mix in the bag, attention from the majors, and
genre-busting breaks-filled sets a-go-go, Kmag gets the
lowdown from one of d&b’s finest exports.
It seems appropriate that I get to interview Dutch three-piece Noisia microphones, the floor beneath our feet strewn with leads. There’s Martijn,
while sick as the proverbial dog. And not just a sniffle and a sore quietest of the three and an embodiment of freestyle skaterdom with his
throat sick: I have what turns out to be food poisoning – contracted hoodie and his cap on sideways; Thijs, long of hair and softly spoken, taking
the previous evening from an otherwise forgettable seafood laksa at great pains to find the right words to describe everything that he loves and
Dim T on London’s Charlotte Street (avoid it like the plague) – and will loathes in equal measure about the business of making music; and Nik,
spend the next two days virtually housebound, feverish to the point of a towering fount of amusing anecdotes and Will Ferrell-style wisecracks.
hallucination and working my way through the entire sixth season of All are clearly exhausted after a full day of interviews and the prospect
The Sopranos between toilet breaks. of another weekend DJing – Canterbury tonight, Gatecrasher’s Summer
Sound System tomorrow – a subject that inspires equal parts affection and
For now, however, the full extent of the illness has yet to settle in. I’ve thrown frustration among all three.
up twice at my office – a usual enough occurrence to merit no special
attention – and by the time I arrive at the non-descript broadcasting studio “I love DJing,” says Thijs. “If I didn’t have to do it I’d still go out of my way to
in Old Street where our interview is to take place I’m aware only of a cold play out once or twice a month. But right now we’re doing it every weekend
sweat on my brow and a vague roiling in my stomach. It’s there, seated in – two or three shows per person. And that has its ups and downs. On the
the waiting room with a cup of black tea, that I suddenly notice the potential one hand, I love travelling and having time to myself; on the other, I hate the
interplay of ‘Noisia’ and ‘Nausea’. Maybe I’m just supremely slow. I always fact that I’m away from home so much and have so little time in the studio.
assumed it was a simple play on Noisier – always took at face value the If you’re away from Friday to Sunday then you’ve only got four days left in the
story of how one of them had coined the name when he reached for a VISION week; one to recover and work on your admin, and three to actually sit down
skateboarding video and read the logo upside down (try it, it really works). and make some music. And that’s just not enough.”
And that was how these guys met: through a mutual interest in skating Nik couldn’t agree more: “It sometimes feels like we’re fighting a thousand
and graffiti, outlets for urban aggression otherwise denied by a relatively forces all determined to make the experience of DJing as painful as possible.
provincial upbringing in the historic city of Groningen – most famous for its There was one show Martijn and I played recently in Granada where
museums, its sugar factories and its boundless love of bicycles. Back then everything was conspiring against us. We’d been up playing the night before,
the boys associated DJing only with the local house clubs that they never so we were virtually sleepwalking by the time we arrived, plus the setup was
set foot in, and it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that they first horrible – CDJ100s, or some shit – and the guy before us played nothing but
tuned into a local radio station broadcasting the music that they would anthems at around 200bpms. The whole thing was so disorganised – we
spend the next nine years taking to places deeper and darker than anyone were booked to play one and a half hours but ended up having to fill a two
could have imagined. and a half hour slot – and the crew were too busy doing coke to care. But
you know what? We got up there, dropped our first record and suddenly it all
Nik remembers the first d&b tune he ever heard being a remix of Le Tone’s made sense. And it’s kind of like that every time – you go though all this shit,
‘Joli Dragon’; for Thijs, it was Todd Terry’s Blackout. Both tracks came out only to then remember at the last minute what it’s all about. And then you do
in 1999. In 2003, Noisia had their first tune out on Blind records; five years it again the next night.”
and roughly a hundred releases later, Noisia are indisputably at the top
of their game, working with both core labels from Virus to Subtitles and Ah, the indomitable spirit of the international DJ. Well, almost. “The only
major conglomerates like EMI and Atlantic (not to mention two of their own, thing that really bothers me,” says Martijn, “is when I play a party somewhere
Vision and Division, catering to d&b and more experimental recordings like Eastern Europe and the guy before me drops all my dubs. I just sit there
respectively). All this while remixing artists as high profile as Moby and thinking: ‘So why did you book me?’ The worst part is that those DJs think
Robbie Williams, and single-handedly making it acceptable to play half an they’re showing you the ultimate form of respect, when in reality they’re
hour of breaks in the middle of an upfront d&b set. royally screwing you over.”
Such a relentless agenda – combined with their role as the new superstar This is a big problem for Noisia, who play out primarily to showcase their
DJs of international d&b – leaves the boys with little time for things as own material. Ultimately, it’s one unpleasant side effect of the digital era:
frivolous as interviews, but they put on brave faces when finally we meet the boys may have heard their first d&b records crowded around a radio
in a basement recording room, seated around a table cluttered with like wartime school children, but their own big break came largely online
www.kmag.co.uk
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