Noir Interview 2013

Noir Interview 2013 Noir is the man who needs no introduction if you enjoy the 4/4 beat that captivates so many of us today. Completely infatuated with Electronic music since the young age of six, Rene, better known as Noir heard Kraftwerk when most of us are learning our ABC’s and was blown away. Noir was hugely influenced in the late 80s and received his international breakthrough in 2005 with his classic House track ‘All About House Music’.

BBM’s Frankie Salt catches up with Noir over a year on since their first meeting, ahead of his Defected compilation release to see if 2012 was as big as it sounded.

Hello Rene, how are you? Good to speak to you again. How has the beginning of 2013 been for you so far?

Hello Frankie, everything is very good thanks! It is so cold in Denmark, it’s snowing outside. The labels are doing really, the compilation looks to do well too. I’m fully booked until the end of July so things are looking promising.

What can we expect from the Defected Compilation?

It’s released on January 28th and I hope it is going to do well. A lot of the tracks are out there but the majority are tracks which I feel have been overlooked and a couple of older tracks from say five, six years ago, so it is good to bring them back. Hopefully there will be some new sounds for people to fall in love with. I didn’t want to be too ahead of time and play what I predict to be big this summer; I just wanted to show the quality of the highest standard of recent tracks.

What does a track need to do to gain the green light from you?

I have chosen tracks which give a unique feel in the clubs and they have all been tried and tested by me in different venues and have all created very special moments of sweat on the walls and emotion with the crowds. I know that each track holds different memories for listeners. They’re all stand out tracks, I didn’t want to focus on big names as a way of selling the compilation. Defected gave me the freedom and I feel that this reflects.

How did you get involved with Defected?

Actually we go way back. In the beginning when I became comfortable with my music in 2005, one of the first people I contacted was Simon Dunmore at Defected with my track ‘All About House Music’. People at this time were accusing Junior Jack of not being creative enough and I felt that there were a lot of different opinions from DJs also on the use of samples. I wrote about this and about the rise of people wanting to DJ and I got a Danish rapper to speak the lyrics, but Simon said that there were too many vocals going on and so I stripped it down. In the end I didn’t go with Defected but then one year later I said hello to Simon at a Defected party and then I got deeper into my music and as Defected went more commercial through the hard times but then also found their own sound again. In 2011, they wanted ‘Around’ and I was highly protective of this track that was on my label. A lot of discussion and time went by and they persuaded me to allow them to work with the track and we just clicked from there.

What direction do you see the Deep House sound evolving?

In 2012, Deep House made a cross over into different genres. Cross Town Rebels, Hot Creations, Noir Music and Defected got airplay on regular radio stations and I believe this was the peak. I’m not sure you will hear more of this sound in 2013. This sound of 2012 is dying out now and people did get bored of the vocals and melodies. The big DJs now are playing more stripped back House with less melodies and vocals. Underground gets commercial and so the underground moves on. The 90s House sound is still heavily influencing the sounds at the moment and I think in the summer this will explode but it won’t last a lot longer.

Yes I agree, and also the Tech House beat becoming more influential again. What were your first influences, which drew you so intensely to the music industry?

It was Kraftwerk when I was six or seven and my friend’s big brother was heavily influenced by these sounds back then. He would make mix tapes for us, and so at this young age I listened to early Hip Hop, Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa. In 1988 I got into the Acid sounds from the US to the UK and this then influenced me too – Inner City’s track ‘Big Fun’ really got me hooked. It portrays exactly what music was back then.

By Frankie Salt

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