Noisia

The masterminds behind the Noisia act had a lot of gigs in Hungary - just consider the fact that their very first international act was in Debrecen. Now, one of these gigs was supposed to take place in Budapest, 17 April, 2010, to celebrate Noisia's first full album, Split The Atom, released just a week prior to the party. In fact, it was an Launch Party, I uploaded the flyer here. Noisia, Black Sun Empire, Chris.Su, Mindscape, anyone understanding what the scene looked like around the time knows that these were heavy hitters, and frankly, still are.

The album, at least for some, was kind of a disappointment due to different reasons. You had people who expected a drum and bass album - these people did not get the memo that the crew decided to consolidate all their monikers (e.g. Hustle Athletics) into Noisia, but I was also mildly disappointed. Another idea floating around was that their output prior to 2010 was so good that it was more of a "there is no way up from the peak" kind of arrangement - the collabs with Phace and the releases on his label, Façade, Stigma, The Bells, Exodus, Block Control and the infamous VIP of Block Control, you name it. At any rate, you have to remember that not everyone is into collecting music and ranting about releases or praising them, some people just want to have a great Friday evening, and unsurprisingly, the event was sold out.

See, with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, people barely remember major news stories and events that happened just a few months or maybe years ago, and there is no point to blame them. A major event in this vein, impacting the vast majority of Europe, occurred in the spring of 2010, despite being relatively far from the continent itself. The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland disrupted air travel over Europe from 14 April. The disruption lasted for a week or so. Martin, who was supposed to represent Noisia on the gig, couldn't fly from the UK, and the story was fairly same for Milan of Black Sun Empire. An unfortunate 180° turn of events, a disappointed crowd, you would imagine.

...Except Martin literally drove from the UK to Budapest, and also managed to grab Milan on the ~2000 km long ride. Pretty crazy if you ask me.

Outer Edges is an absolute mind**** of an album. Highly recommended band for those who can handle the heavy load.

Top 3 technically proficient drum & bass producers of all time without question.

I have only just discovered Noisia, but man they are awesome! It's not often that you find newer electronic music with that "classic" feel brought in to it... Love it.

At their core, Noisia are neurofunk drum & bass producers and have been hugely important to dnb in that respect. To limit them to one style, however, would be missing the point as they've had successful releases across a whole range of genres from electro and breaks to dubstep and grime. They've also managed to cover a broad spectrum of dnb; from the minimal style of Metalheadz, Shogun et al. on Noisia - The Bells / Last Look to the slightly more typical dancefloor-crushing tracks like "Stigma" and "Facade VIP".

I've followed all of their releases since they first dropped the original mix of "Facade" in 2006 and, across all the variation, they've managed to maintain a consistently exceptional standard. You can tell that these guys didn't luck out or learn to produce a particular style by rote but that they've got genuine musical talent.

After "Facade", they just kept getting better and better. When "Stigma"/"Crank" dropped, my mind was blown ("Crank" is the better side guys :P). My memory's shit but I still remember the first time I heard both tunes like it was yesterday. Their musical killing spree culminated in the release of Noisia - Split The Atom; a brilliant combination of dnb and breaks. The standout tracks ("Machine Gun", "Split The Atom", "Alpha Centauri") were breaks but none of it mattered to me because it was all of Noisia quality.

I've been disappointed with the direction they've taken since then. 2011 hasn't really been a highlight year for Noisia in any way. The major release this year was Noisia - Friendly Intentions / Displaced which I thought was a quickly forgettable affair and I felt "Friendly Intentions" was more Hazard Vs Distorted Minds (before they jumped on the jungle revival bandwagon) than Noisia. The other major Vision release was Noisia & Phace / Noisia - Program / Regurgitate which was a stronger, more typical Noisia effort that I enjoyed but just didn't feel that huge impact from (the kind of impact I'd expect given their few-and-far-between release schedule for dnb this year). A lot of their dubstep output is nothing that hasn't been done before and the "Scary Monsters" remix, especially, was the kind of vacuous mid-range wobble-line nonsense that I didn't think Noisia would be into. Sure, it's "filthy" but it's also been done to death already.

Anyway, Noisia are a very talented group of producers with a catalogue of brilliant and varied music but I can't help hoping that 2012 will be less dubstep, more diplodocus.

In 2006, Noisia announced that they would be dropping their 'Drifter', 'Frizz' and 'Hustle Athletics' aliases, and would produce under one single name 'Noisia'. They released a statement saying they wanted to embrace their musical flexibility and creativity rather than mask themselves under various identities.