German dance producer Alexander Ridha, who records as Boys Noize, creates stark, dirty, and direct tracks with hard, crisp breaks. Leslie Feist, whose breathy track “My Moon My Man” was remixed by Boys Noize into a slow-boiling dance anthem, called the producer’s work “the dirtiest clean I’ve ever heard.”
On Oi Oi Oi, the debut album from Boys Noize, Ridha lines up booming, economical beats and smears them with well-placed sonic blasts. The end result is frayed and funky.
Ridha works best when he’s at his most simple and most direct. The appropriately titled “Oh!” is a cold slab of mechanized funk, “Deny Selected” is economical with a cut-up guitar riff, and “Let’s Buy Happiness” is a dance-floor-ready remix of a Transformers sound effect.
Ridha is a singles artist and a remix specialist that can melt down a single track into a concentrated nugget of sound. Hearing the same peak-time intensity for a whole album gets wearisome, but this long-player — despite not being his ideal format — contains plenty of body-moving beats.
– Patrick Sisson
Boys Noize: www.boysnoize.com
Last Gang Records: www.lastgangrecords.com