Interview by Craig Haynes & Lou Turnbull

Lou: You caught your first break when Mayhem contacted you on MySpace. With software tools making it easier to make electronic music and MySpace allowing anyone to put their music out to a worldwide audience, what’s your advice for something trying to get noticed?

Thijs: Just through quality... besides knowledge and equipment you need ideas as well. You need to think of something that hasn’t been done 200 times like something that has only been done three times! Every musician in the world starts out saying “Hey I wanna do something like this” and then develops their own style. Which is what we did when we started, we were blatant rip offs!

L: Who did you want to sound like?

T: Cause 4 Concern, Stakka & Skynet foremost, then we found out about Ed Rush and Optical. Their production was something else to us. That was really the era we came in, the whole roots of drum and bass and the Full Cycle era, we missed that completely. We came in with Konflict and Bad Company, Ram Trilogy…

Craig: Where do you get your inspiration from now?

T: Usually from outside of dnb, we haven’t done a lot of dnb lately… We’re taking a step back from that: on our album we don’t know if there’s going to be any drum and bass. [horrified looks from C + L] We’ve got a tune with Amon Tobin and one with Phace that is danceable but to me more like detailed listening music. We think an album is something that is mainly intended to listen to and not to dance to. So even though our sound has definitely always catered to the dancefloor, now we’re like let’s see if we can do listening music with that kind of sound. We’ve almost got a responsibility to try and do a dnb tune for the album. We’ll always do dnb singles [sighs of relief from C + L] but to me it just feels kinda weird, having dnb on it.

C: You worked with KRS-One on Exodus, any plans for more hip hop vocals on your tracks?

T: Yeah we’ve just finished in the studio with Foreign Beggars. I heard them in a car in France, and I was “who’s this, this is good!” We finally got through to them and they really liked our stuff. We did this electro track for our new album and we figured it could use vocals to get it more radio-friendly so we arranged something last week.

L: Any artists you’d recommend for 2008?

T: I’m not really one for A&R y’know. I’m really into Icicle but he’s already getting there so its not really upcoming… I don’t really like the new production standard at the moment. Everyone uses that Pendulum, Subfocus snare. We do it as well, but always try and hide it… To me the electronic Pendulum snare is just low end and white noise spread out and it doesn’t sound a lot like a snare anymore. These new electronic sounding drums, there’s no vibe to it for me. Especially in Spor tunes. I think he should work on his snares. [C + L incredulous. T laughing] He knows what I think, I’ve said it a couple of times.

L: So last question, what do you prefer, big raves or smaller intimate gigs.

T: Two weeks ago I played our biggest gig ever, a sports stadium in St Petersburg with like 20,000 people... Its good to experience that size but its not the best vibe when the crowd are 15m in front of you. I think the best vibe is fairly small with a lot of people that really listen. Like when you play a shit tune they realise and when you surprise them they love it. So I guess the intimate thing is better but it has to be the right kind of crowd, the crowd that knows and likes to be surprised and not just wants to go off.

Back down in the Cooler Thijs drops a really innovative set that isn’t wasn’t what people were expecting. There was plenty of electro and breaks in the mix but all with the familiar dirty Noisia b-lines. Hopefully he got a taste of the ‘right crowd’, with an intimate venue and fans that knew the tunes new and old and were going off to everything from High Contrast to Noisia’s own Yellow Brick. By the end of the set everyone in the place, including Thijs himself, is headbanging to Prodigy’s Breathe and the churning culmination of Noisia’s Masochist remix sends the crowd apeshit.

The name Noisia comes from the word ‘VISION’ when viewed upside down, and it’s clear that Noisia have their sights set way beyond the floorfilling dnb scene they’re currently smashing. It may come as a shock that the album might not have a single drum and bass track, but they want this album to be a quality, listenable, even beautiful record, not just a collection of dnb bangers for the dancefloor. Noisia’s forays into house and techno have met with some criticism from their dnb fans and the sound may not be as accomplished, this should only add to the excitement and anticipation of the album. Noisia have demonstrated such versatility already, it will be interesting to see how this translates onto the album, and how the different genres are going to work when thrown into the mix together. This is the chance to see Noisia branching out, experimenting, doing something dangerous. They’re not going to do what you expect, they’re not going to play what you expect, they’re not even going to do what their (dnb) fans might want. They’re going to make the music they want, that they believe makes a quality record… and we can’t wait. In the wise words of Maxi Jazz, “You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision”

I’m not a big Moby fan but with news of his latest track incorporating some hip hop vocals and Noisia being enlisted for a re-fix it was something I had to check out. ‘Alice’ is the first track to be released on Moby’s new album ‘Last Night’. The lyrics come courtesy of Nigerian crew 419 Squad and the flow of their fast, dark rhyme is an exciting base for the track.

The impact of the Noisia remix on the vocals is immediate, they’re been beefed up and brought to the fore and roll over a thick half-tempo break that get’s your head nodding. This is followed by a trademark Noisia build-up that pushes the energy in the rhyme. As is Noisia’s style, when the percussion kicks in it’s crispier than a bag of Quavers but that’s just a tease. It’s midway through the track that you get hit by a fooking big drop as a dirty b-line thunders along, dragging with it chopped up vocals and precise, complex percussive edits.

This isn’t Noisia’s most exciting work, but it’s a quality remix of an unusual track. It’s an altogether darker affair than Moby’s album version and they’ve made it unmistakably their own whilst remaining true to the original. Essentially another dancefloor banger from the Noisia boys!

Released 17th March 2008 on Mute.

[Also includes original album cut, breakbeat mix by General Midi and a Drop The Lime “Heavy Bass” remix that does exactly what is says on the tin; sick wobbly basslines!]

Check it out at www.myspace.com/denoisia