Noisia’s Division imprint has really been kicking out the weird bass lately, and their newest acquisition of experimental bass artist Noer the Boy and his EP Ganzfield are certainly no exception. In fact, the EP, due out tomorrow, May 18, may be an apotheosis of weird bass music, if the single “Tour” is anything to go by.
Noer the Boy, who’s been releasing crazy, sound design-driven bass stuff since 2016, truly does defy genres. Fans will find no genre hashtags on his Soundcloud other than “bass music,” and that’s fair enough. His work really doesn’t sound like anything else, and “Tour” is all over the board.
Other tracks on Ganzfield like “Nosferatu’s Castle” and “Apex Chase” have discernible halftime beats but are still wild and unpredictable with long, beatless breaks and completely unpredictable interludes. “Tour” is one of the tracks on the EP like “Torch” and “Vertigo Train” which seem completely unstructured and leaning more towards soundsystem and experimental electronica.
The truth is all of the tracks on this EP are composed like experimental tracks in the sense that their seeming randomness is actually the product of classical-style scoring of all the different layers that appear in the track. This is especially hard to do with heavy bass and drums, because those elements of any track lend themselves to the bass music structure with which most producers and fans are familiar. It seems Noer the Boy is so dedicated to sound design that he’s willing to take all this bass out of that linear structure and spend the extra time to create tracks with real dissonance, imploring the bass come along for the ride. It’s no easy feat.
“Tour” is a fun sort of bridge of genres in the way it’s put together and it probably the closest on the EP to a conventional bass music track composition-wise. It opens with an impactful halftime beat and a lot of grinding, robotic synths over it. The track then seems like it’s going to merge into something more techno-driven, but the beat in fact stays with halftime. The most soundsystem influence comes in on the breaks, which are much longer here than in most tracks. These breaks are what really trick the listener into thinking the beat is going to change, so the surprise in “Tour”, especially is one is used to Noer the Boy, is that he always comes back to that eerie, hip hop-driven halftime beat.
Anyone who’s been following Noer the Boy won’t be surprised with all the surprises on Ganzfield and in “Tour.” This relatively new producer has a lot of tricks up his sleeve and if his style so far has taught us anything it’s not to expect a set style.
The Ganzfield EP by Noer the Boy is out on Division tomorrow, May 18. Check out Division’s Beatport for purchase links, up shortly.