There are some things happening that you can’t control, and they’re just bizarre.” “It’s something I want to share, it’s polarity. “If you’re in a studio with Lady Gaga, and she accidentally pours water all over your modular system, how perfect the world becomes in that moment,” laughs Ridha. Ridha is credited as a co-writer on Gaga’s collaboration with Ariana Grande, “ Rain On Me,” which at the time of writing, has clocked up just under 800 million individual streams on Spotify alone.
There was no damage to the electronics, and even less to their burgeoning creative partnership. Still, very little of this character investigation quite anticipates how this DJ from Hamburg came to sit in a hotel room with Lady Gaga for the first time, nor exactly what caused Mother Monster herself to indiscriminately spill a glass of water over a modular synth circuit that had been setup for the occasion. He has also remained fiercely loyal to a family of artists, including Housemeister and DJedjotronic. Nonetheless, he has dipped more than a toe into popular culture with remixes for the likes of Snoop Dogg, Depeche Mode and even David Lynch, maintaining his five studio albums for himself and the BNR stable. Having concluded earlier than many that much about the industry “seemed like bullshit,” he has stayed true to this ethos and remained fiercely independent. On the side, I do work for other people, and I can deal with it as a producer, but as an artist? I’d go absolutely bonkers. “Part of the reason why I make so much music, and am then able to put it out, is that there’s nobody I need to get the approval of. “I’d say that starting a label was the first dream come true,” Ridha adds. Ridha quickly found himself touring the world, aligned with a crew of DJs like Tiga, Erol Alkan and 2ManyDJs, among whom he was, and remains, “the kid, Alex.” Easily living up to the bombastic promise of its title and crossing genre lines with few fucks given and plenty of crunchy sidechained production, Oi Oi Oi was soon unstoppable and unavoidable on sticky, neon-tinted dancefloors.
#Rarify scissors series
With the sort of restlessness and realness that only comes with youth, Ridha bet the farm on his Boys Noize moniker, establishing its associated label, Boys Noize Records (AKA, BNR) in order to release a series of singles that he patiently mailed to DJs across Europe, followed by his debut album, Oi Oi Oi. But a few years later, house had become really functional in Hamburg, and the music I played began to change to electro on labels like Clone, Bunker and especially Gigolo.” As a warm up DJ, I’d play a lot of deep house Moodymann, Theo Parrish and French Touch. “At that time I was 100 percent into the house side of things, although I listened to everything that came into the store. “My first gig was in Hamburg, 1999,” recalls Ridha.
While Europe’s underground dance floors were increasingly hypnotised by the precise, restrained repetition of minimal techno, Ridha, a wide-eyed, unibrowed devotee to punk rock and hip-hop, wanted something a little, well, noisier. Working as a DJ and record-store assistant in the Northern German city of Hamburg, he was barely out of his teens before he was known locally for his precocious technical talent behind the decks, as well as his relentless energy. Ridha has been a recognised musical threat since the mid-00s, when he first released music under the guise of Kid Alex. But it’s also an uncharacteristically hubristic introduction from an artist known for their low key approach, a German-Iraqi hero of crossover culture who has confidently, quietly evolved from a maximal rave instigator to a creative muse to the likes of Frank Ocean and Lady Gaga. The bio at the top of Alex Ridha’s Twitter feed reads, “3x Grammy award nominated DJ & producer.” This is about as succinct of a summary of the achievements of Ridha, better known as Boys Noize, as you might find.
0 kommentar(er)
