Woooiii. Well that wasn’t on our bass bingo card.
Seven years after announcing that they were going their separate ways, Noisia have revealed that they have started making music together again, and what’s more, will return to the stage this December at Melkweg Amsterdam.
Noisia are in motion again.
The news comes directly from Martijn, Nik and Thijs, who have issued a statement explaining that the distance of the past seven years has gradually changed how they feel about the project. After disbanding, the three went their separate ways into solo projects and collaborations, while continuing to share a building, studios, Vision and, importantly, a friendship. Over time, the difficult memories surrounding Noisia began to lose some of their weight, replaced by the joy, beauty and mutual respect they associated with the project.
Then they started making music together again.
That, unsurprisingly, made them want to experience the other part of Noisia again too: the stage, the crowds, and the special, very particular feeling of sharing this music with people in a room.
Their first step will take place at Melkweg Amsterdam on December 4th, a venue they describe as one of their “most familiar and beloved”. And while it would be tempting to immediately start wondering about new Noisia music, the trio are being rather more measured about what comes next. They plan to experiment with their back catalogue alongside material they’ve recently been making, taking that music to shows, seeing how it feels, and allowing those experiences to feed back into the production process.
In other words, they’re not rushing this.
No release date has been announced, and the statement makes clear that they intend to take their time before putting new material out. For now, this is about getting back in the room together, getting back on stage, and feeling out what Noisia sounds and feels like after seven years apart.
Their full statement is below:
“Hello person,
Exactly seven years ago, we decided to disband.
Back then, we tried everything we could to get us out of the deadlock we were in. We had to admit the answer wasn’t in more trying, in more force. It was in letting go. We needed a full stop.
When we ended Noisia, we had no intention of returning to it. We went our separate ways, followed our individual interests, and started solo projects and new collaborations.
But we stayed in the same building, with our three studios in a shared space. We still had Vision. And we still hung out as friends. While becoming submerged in our own worlds, we would catch glimpses of each other navigating new terrain. Taking risks, growing.
We’d sometimes find ourselves missing the feelings we’d get when sharing the Noisia music, and missing our lives around it. But talking about Noisia would often lead straight back to thoughts about those struggles and pressures from the past.
But then, more recently, we noticed those thoughts didn’t follow anymore. Memories of joy, beauty, and mutual respect started to outweigh the shadows of the past. Mentioning Noisia had lost its heaviness.
We’d get a little giddy in conversations about the things we could maybe do. We took up bouldering together. We got closer. And slowly, plans began to hatch.
We started making music together again. That in turn made us crave the excitement of the stage, and the feeling of sharing our music with crowds…
We’ve grown a lot individually. We intuitively feel that our own endeavours can now co-exist with our Noisia project. Combining our forces again feels incredibly exciting now.
We want to experiment and play with our back catalogue and the material we’ve recently been making. Then, we want to test new music at shows, bring our experiences from those shows into our production decisions, test it again, starting a positive feedback loop that way. So we’ll take our time before we release anything.
This new process will start at one of our most familiar and beloved venues: Melkweg Amsterdam, on December 4th. That’s the first step, with more to come. We hope to see you all there!
Love, Martijn, Nik and Thijs”
Seven years is a long time in drum and bass. Apparently, it was long enough.
We repeat: Noisia are in motion again.
The December 4th show at Melkweg is the first step. More will follow
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