“After Power came out in 2009 I was just so busy making music for other people but after two years I was ready to make my own stuff again,” explains the softly spoken German. “So I basically locked myself in the studio for a few months and just, you know, [made] what I was feeling…” Ridha trails off. In 2007 Boys Noize released Oi Oi Oi, this was when Ridha was only 25, but the album reeked of a maturity and a sophistication which gave away to many that he had been DJing in clubs Berlin and Hamburg since he was only 15 years of age.
As Ridha comes back to the conversation, his next statement evidences that even though it was released so early on in his career, he is still very proud of his first album.
“In 2011 there was a moment when I released a CD of all my remixes and it was the first time I realised that after so much time that I still love everything that I’ve done. So I started listening to my first album again. That helped me a lot to focus on what I was doing in the studio because I wanted to make another album again that I would listen to in five or six years and still be amazed by it.”
His newest album, Out Of The Black, that came out of the aforementioned studio time, is his most stylistically varied album to date with this variation keynoted by guest vocalist Snoop Dogg who raps on the track Got It.
“I grew up with his music so I knew him but he didn’t know me [until] I did an official remix for him in 2009 but you know it was an obvious situation where the big record label asks you,” explains Ridha, implying that even though he had remixed a Snoop track, the Dogg probably had no idea who he was. This was until Ridha joined Twitter. “So when I discovered Twitter the first thing I did was I wrote to him directly and said, ‘Hey man, did you ever check out the remix I did for you?’ and he replied straight away saying that he ‘loved it and I should send more beats and stuff.’”
Snoop Dogg, who is now releasing as Snoop Lion, is regarded by many as rap music’s most prolific ‘cross-over’ artist and this correspondent would suggest the most well known rapper in Australia. This meant that during the interview vicariousness prevailed with Ridha more than happy to talk about flying to LA to record with Snoop.
“I’ve only seen his apartment in LA, I think he’s got a big mansion outside the city somewhere. His apartment was cool, it reminded me a little bit of his old apartment as a 16-17 year old where like all my homies hung out,” states Ridha, flecks of excitement come in to his soft voice as he recalls his time with Snoop. “It had that vibe which made it easy for me, I was expecting all this bling bling champagne kinda scene but it was basic and I thought that was really cool and attractive, a really comfortable environment for me.” Finally on Snoop Dogg, Ridha surmises, “He is such a nice guy, so cool, he’s kind of like the little child that still lives in us all. It’s great to see that and that he is having a lot of fun in music and not taking things too seriously, that’s what I think is perfect as well.”
So writing a house track with rapper over the top was a new thing for Boys Noize but there is still that classic ‘Boys Noize’ sound on Out Of The Black, particularly the first single from the album, XTC. It features a mechanical voice stating “X-T-C, one for me,” and then at 80 seconds comes a signature ‘drop’ driving the track into a synthesised low-end dream (or nightmare).
“I wrote the song one night before I played huge festival called Electric Daisy in the summer of 2011 and they were putting me on a stage where I was playing in front of 80,000 people and I had the vocals in my mind and I wanted to test them. My intention, originally, with XTC was just to make an intro track for my sets – something really simple and banging so I made this track and tested it out and it worked.” However, it took a little feedback from some ‘friends’ before Ridha decided to turn this intro into a track. “I was never really in love with the track until I made some little changes and sent it over to my friends like Soulwax and Justice and both guys were giving me a different angle and a different aspect of the record, they were saying, ‘Yo, this is actually pretty weird and has all those different parts’ and that made me love the track and so it’s on the album.”
Ridha’s forthcoming appearance at Future Music Festival is not only the first time Australia will see him play tracks from Out Of The Black but it will also be the premiere of Ridha’s live set. In closing the interview Ridha sets mouths salivating with his description of his live show. “It’s basically me playing my own music the way a band plays live how it plays in the studio. I have a lot of things to control inside this cube and there’s even another level to my live show with me controlling the visuals as well, they’re very minimal and very to the point.”
BY DAN WATT
