Noisia talk to Kmag about their eagerly anticipated debut LP, how they made that album cover and their plans for an epic live project.

Why the name Split The Atom for your debut album?
It's the name of one of the tracks on it. We tried to think of a title for just the album not derived from its contents but we couldn't think of anything that represents it better than Split The Atom. Splitting an atom is something very technical and we're really technical with music.

Why is the single Split The Atom significant?
It has many elements to it, but it's not too angry, eyes down or scenester ... it was a bit of magic with more crossover potential and it's not genre specific. Like where The Prodigy make music at many different BPMs, and people call it Prodigy Music, Split The Atom is just Noisia.

 

Split the Atom by NOISIA

 

Are you even drum & bass artists?
We always say electronic music, mainly drum & bass.

How the hell did you make that album cover, where your skin is nearly being ripped off your faces under extreme Gs?
It's a leaf blower. They're really powerful, it really hurts and it blows in your face like crazy. It was so loud as well. We don't know if you can see it, but we all had earplugs in. You can feel your eyeballs shifting in their sockets and your skin completely rearranging itself on your skull. It was really intense.

 

So, you had a big night out, a few beers, found a leaf blower and...
We actually planned it out. We wanted to have the effect of the skin being blown away by some giant force. It wasn't a random leaf blower, and it wasn't conceived around a table with beer. We wanted to have an explosion – a nuclear explosion – but not a corny one where you can see the fire on the sleeve ... it also makes for a really interesting promo shot.

Is the debris for real? That had to sting...
That's Photoshop, but it's actually real, the guy had all the dust and debris in his studio.

 

Which track on Split The Atom took the longest to complete?
Stigma. It used to be a completely different track. It took ... maybe years to make. Shellshock also took a long time. We changed it a lot, the grooves. Shellshock is the most technical track on the album by far.

Shellshock ft. Foreign Beggars by NOISIA

Which track was the quickest to make?
There are a lot of skits on there that were made really quickly, but ... two years ago when we got the new studio there was no acoustic treatment and we were really enthusiastic to do something because we finally could set up the speakers and computer again. We rolled out a little drum & bass catch up session. Diplodocus was the product of that ... we made it in one day.

What music influenced you during the making of Split The Atom?
Many ... too many to mention we think. For every tune there are influences. Justice influenced Machine Gun. The second track of the album My World was influenced by the Break remix of Commix's Talk To Frank. Tipper and Mr. Oizo influence all the skits. Michael Jackson influences Alpha Centauri. Black Sun Empire was a big influence on Thursday.

How has your music been received by the electronic music community, outside of drum & bass?
They always talk about how heavy our music is – how the hell do we make those bass sounds? That's cool but we don't think all of our music revolves around that bass. It's more about anger and energy. It's what we get known for but we put a lot of time and effort into other stuff.

How do you feel about the near universal praise you're receiving from DnB fans?
It's grown steadily. I remember on Dogs On Acid, when we first got some attention there was a bit of hype and then a few haters popped up which means you've got a modicum of fame or whatever. Since then it's been a steady rise of enthusiasm, which is just really nice. We're really happy about it. We're really grateful that people are into our music and attitude, when they slate so many other people. We make the music for ourselves but then we release it for them, and we do so in a format that we think makes sense to you as well as us. We wouldn't release a tune that we think will make people say 'well that other track they did was better'.

What's next for Noisia?
Write another album. Do it quicker. Make sure it can at least partially be performed live or in a live environment. At the moment we don't have an idea how to do a Noisia live set [click here to discuss this in our forums, and make your own suggestions]. We have to slightly adapt the music that we make – we think – so it makes sense to do it live, because otherwise we're just going to press play on a bunch of multi tracks and filter them separately. A lot of people call that a live show, but we don't want to do one of those ... unless it's done extremely well like Daft Punk. They don't really do a true live show but it's fucking awesome to be in the crowd when they perform. But we don't think we can manage a production like they can! Whatever we do, it has to be interesting to watch – an experience. People have to feel like they're watching us make music live.

Any final words for your fans?
We'd like you to hear to Split The Atom in the car or something, when you're actually listening to it from A to Z. It's not a bunch of singles, it's an album. We have a collection of tracks and this is how we like them, in this order. It's how we want people to perceive our music.

 

• Noisia

Related Links:

• Noisia: Split The Atom Vinyl Track Listing
• Noisia Split The Atom LP Track Listing
• Noisia - Split The Atom Video
• Noisia Vision Competition
• Noisia To Release Could This Be

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