From J-Pop to Xbox - The many sounds of Noisia

Photo: Noisia Credit: Frederik Bosch

Moody and ominous, light and ethereal, rhythmic and funky. With a swinging pendulum oscillating between all of these, it's no surprise that Dutch super group Noisia are leading the way in the drum & bass scene. 

A decade in to their careers, the trio are doing anything but resting on their laurels. From producing game soundtracks to running not one but three independent music labels, Noisia actively pursue the full spectrum of sound, whether it's drum & bass to electronic dance to writing symphonies for international orchestras.

There's certainly a lot going on between them, not to mention remixes for Katy Perry, Skrillex, deadmau5 and KoЯn (check 'Kill Mercy Within' above). But before you think they're offering their Midas Touch to just anyone, the collective want to make it clear that they're not about to compromise their artistic integrity.

The longtime friends ensure the quality of the music is a running priority, even if they did do that one remix for all-girl J-Pop band Momoiro Clover Z - ironically a testament to their innovation in the studio.

Jasmine Phull speaks to Thijs de Vlieger about the most inoffensive of music, gaming as a way of life and aspiring to make it in the movie business.

Originally from the Netherlands but making soundwaves across the globe, does the heritage and music culture of your home influence what you create? 

Of course we were influenced by our immediate physical surroundings, but we were really internet forum scene kids form the turn of the century.

Back then it was still kind of a new thing. Most of our peers were spread out worldwide; with some we had almost daily contact on forums including DSCI4, dogsonacid and dnbforum.nl. This is where we learned most about production. But of course in Holland there was already a great physical and cultural infrastructure for dance music. When we started playing DJ shows that definitely helped!

We thought your comment on remixing other artist's songs was very interesting. On one hand it's an honour - your remix list includes Katy Perry (above) to Labrinth, but on the other hand it can limit your own creativity and production persuasions. Is there an exception to this? 

We only accept remixes in which we hear something and say to ourselves 'it would be cool to try and do this and that to it'. I think even our remix for Katy Perry sounds like a Noisia tune. So we strive to not give up our 'artistic integrity' - I hate that term - even when we do remixes.

Do you find remixing other artist’s songs creatively stifling?

In many cases those limitations can actually be quite beneficial, if everything is possible it's really hard sometimes to decide what to do, if you're limited you're automatically also pointed at what it is you can do. 

You create not just for the music world but also for the games sphere, like the soundtrack for 'Devil May Cry' for instance (listen to 'Hunter Theme' from that above). What draws you to the gaming platform and how do you think your music compliments a game?

Writing game music is great. We are quite avid gamers ourselves, so it always seemed like the right thing to do. One thing we really loved about doing Devil May Cry is that it showed us what an incredible team effort such games are.

The feeling of being part of a big group of people actually realising an idea some people thought up, that feeling is very rewarding indeed. Imagining things and creating them yourself is awesome, but the feeling of team spirit is quite special.

Was gaming a big part of your childhood?

Yes. We all grew up on games, going way back to Amiga and MSDOS. Our fathers were all quite computer-literate. I even remember sitting on my father's lap playing a DOS game he'd programmed in C++.

When Martijn was a child his father said he was too young to play Red Alert and uninstalled it, and then at some point Martijn caught his father frantically playing the game himself when he thought everyone was asleep. [Laughs].

Gaming obviously wasn't just a childhood phase.

We used to have an Xbox 360 and PS3 set up in our shared studio, Martijn was always killing it with Trials HD. I couldn't really play in there because all I wanted to play was Fifa but I would get so fired up it wasn't really beneficial to the vibe of making music. Nik is more of a PC gamer, he plays all kinds of games and he actually still owns it from time to time on Unreal Tournament '99 servers! 

Can you talk a bit about the challenge of creating a score for a game versus creating music solely for the purpose of being listened to?

Making music that is supposed to go with an interactive video is of course a huge challenge; it's quite different from writing autonomous music, where the musician controls the timing.

The game and the player pretty much decide what goes where. You just make sound that goes well with that. Obviously our sound is still very much influenced by the kind of music we usually write, but that was exactly what the DMC team wanted from us!

Are there any game soundtracks that stand out to you? Why?

Yes there is one: Amon Tobin's soundtrack to Splinter Cell. It is SO good (listen to it above). That soundtrack changed my life. Musically, but also personally because we became friends with him after we hit him up about that score and it turned out the approval was reciprocated.

But one of the cool things about game soundtracks is they just get to you. You might not like them at first listen, they might be miles away from what you usually like to listen to, but you usually are exposed to them anyway and then you end up whistling the theme or the menu music when you're in the kitchen getting a drink. I remember Goldeneye for Nintendo64 had a couple of tunes like that.

What is your process for creating the music? Are you hands on? Do you play the game and really get to know the inner psyche of a player? 

When we did our part of the score for Motorstorm: Apocalypse (above) we got a PS3 'devkit', and we just started playing the game in its early stages and meanwhile playing back all kinds of tunes we had made and even ones by other producers, just to see what worked.

Some unexpected things actually came out, so we wrote down what worked, and set out to write stuff like that. In the case of Motorstorm, we also used a lot of Klaus Baedelt's part of the score, which was more or less a seventies chase scene funk score. 

With DMC we had an FTP account with Ninja Theory where they would upload gameplay videos, and we'd Skype with the Audio Director Tom Colvin and talk through what they needed. Before we started we got a long briefing about the storyline they had in mind and all the characters, not just who they were in this version but also in previous editions in the Devil May Cry franchise. 

Is creating the soundtrack to a movie the next step? What genre would you consider?

We would love to. I think at first beggars can't be choosers, but our sound is quite dark and usually on the aggressive side too, so I don't see us getting asked for a romantic comedy just yet. 

No, but seriously, we would love to. Problem is, most music supervisors have heard of us, but have only heard our drum & bass releases. We are a lot more versatile than that, and we can get a lot better in that area too, but we still need to prove that I think.

You also run three labels, Invisible Vision and Division. What was the idea behind creating these and releasing other artist's music?

We started Vision Recordings in 2005, ten years ago. We just released a compilation album too, with the best of ten years of Vision Recordings. Vision is our main drum and bass label.

We also run Division, which is for what we call 'non-drumandbass'. It started out as an electrohouse label, but we ended up putting out some dubstep too, and now we have some very exciting stuff in the pipeline for Division that's actually not made solely for dance floors.

Invisible is a place for drum & bass tunes that are a bit too experimental or deep for vision, and it's also a breeding ground for talented new artists. 

What are three things you look for when signing an artist?

- Production skills. We cannot ignore it if someone is talented but lacks the engineering capabilities. We need it to sound good. But if we can hear the potential we love to help people out to get it great.

- An ear for groove. We get so many demos that sound really loud and angry, but lack any kind of groove or cohesion. Not interested in that.

- A little musicality is needed too. The human brain wants to rave, it likes loud and energetic music, but it also likes to be tickled a bit by an interesting breakdown or a well written build up raising expectations about what's going to happen.

Your music oscillates between moody and brooding, light and ethereal... Were you exposed to a lot of music during your childhoods? 

Absolutely. I was personally raised as an omnivore, my father loved classical, jazz, blues, rock and roll, and so did my mother. They played us all of that, and let us select too once we were old enough to operate the CD player, or cassette player as it was at first. So during night long gaming sessions my little brother and I would alternate Billie Holiday, Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters and Mozart.

Later on I became infatuated with electronic music, and the internet came into existence together with PCs that could do two things at a time: so we could play games while playing downloaded music on the computer too! Imagine that!

Who was the most influential person – musically – while you were growing up?

My father. I think a lot of my musical genes come from him as well, he even learned a couple of instruments but then after that he focused all his energy on playing chess! (Laughs) His whole family was quite musical I believe.

When and how did you first realize your love for music?

No idea. Music was just always there. Sitting up at night recording the radio to cassette tape when I was eight was probably an indication!

Scrolling through your Twitter feed is quite an insight into the mind of NOISIA. A favourite tweet of ours was: 'Nothing offends me like inoffensive music'. Can you elaborate on this sentiment? Do you have an example?

There's a bit of poetic license there, I thought it was a cool thing to say, but of course there are things way more offensive than inoffensive music. But this is what I meant: Music that doesn't take any risks, music that is kept safe so it doesn't offend anyone, music like that can really piss me off sometimes!

Noisia did a remix for J-Pop all-girl group Momoiro Clover Z. How did that collaboration come about?

They asked us, and Nik said yes when he heard the vocals because they could be used in a completely different context - way more epic and a little scary. It’s quite random if you actually understand the lyrics, but we think that’s great.

Have you ever seen them live? A mix of ballet, gymnastics, and action moves would make for an impressive show.

We did check out some Youtube to see what they were about. Can you understand that it all looks quite weird to us? Amazing, but weird!

Lastly, what's up next?

We're currently in the middle of a run of ten Noisia Invites shows celebrating ten years of Vision Recordings. We've just released that compilation, together with a book that compiles ten years of artwork for the releases: most of it is done by Nik himself, besides making music he somehow manages to also design all the record sleeves!

Then we'll release the new tunes from that compilation and a couple of exclusives on April 20. On the production front we're about to start writing beats for Kraantje Pappie’s next album; he’s a Dutch rapper for whom we've produced two albums already (we operate under our Nightwatch alias when we produce for him).

There's a couple of exciting projects coming out on Division Recordings too, mostly behind the scenes co-production work. 

I'm also doing a second show with the North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, I wrote a piece for just Flute, Clarinet, Oboe, Bassoon and French Horn for the last edition. But this time I intend to write a composition for a bigger ensemble, with a lot of electronics backing up the live players. I hope this piece comes out really well so we can use it as a showreel for potential game and movie scoring jobs!

We'd be very interested to do more conventional game work too with lots of sound design, or even writing huge melodic orchestral scores (which we’d of course still process hugely, and we’d combine it with our sound). But from a developer’s point of view the latter might be a bit risky because we haven’t had a chance to prove ourselves yet. We're working on that!

Head here for more on Noisia