In The Studio With | Boys Noize

Alex Ridha’s fifth Boys Noize album aggressively explores the schism between soaring melodies and hard, atonal beats. Danny Turner reveals his modular approach

© Shane McCauley

Almost 15 years after the release of Oi Oi Oi, the popularity of Alex Ridha’s Boys Noize alias shows no sign of receding. Anointed one of the world’s top DJs, his aggressive techno-punk sound is both uncompromising and distinctive, leading to remixes for the likes of Depeche Mode, Daft Punk and Nine Inch Nails and surprisingly leftfield alliances with Snoop Dogg, Mark Ronson and Lady Gaga.

Inspired by sound itself and approaching each album with a clean slate, Ridha’s fascination with technology has recently branched into the modular realm, specifically Eurorack. The familiar sound of motoric, battering beats and deeply immersive textures underpins his latest Boys Noize album Polarity, exploring the sonic tensions between industrial rock and electronic pop through a whole host of collaborations.

How does the album symbolism and title Polarity relate to your fifth Boys Noize album?

“The visual aspect of music has been very important to me and on Polarity I’ve had the pleasure of working with graphic designer Eric Timothy Carlson because I was a huge fan of his work with Bon Iver. We went into every aspect of polarity and how it relates to my personality, collecting ideas and illustrating them before applying them to the design. By polarity I not only mean our society and personal relationships, but whether musical extremes can work together. For example, what can I do to make a very hard, disturbing and industrial distorted sequence funky or how can I break it up with a sound or vocal and balance those things out? Usually, what I find is a magical point where those two sides meet.”

There are many examples of that on the album. For example, harsh rhythmic sounds grinding against female pop vocals…

“That’s been a musical fantasy of mine for many years but it took a long time to get to a point where I would meet an artist I adored enough to bring into my world. For me, it never seems to work when you send or receive stuff remotely. To create a song like Love & Validation with Kelsey Lu was great. I’d been to her concerts, we became friends and when we created the song together in the studio we both had goosebumps. Everything starts with a sound, but if you can manage to get that emotion on the record then people will resonate with that.”