Noisia are a Dutch electronic music trio known for their unique sound and flawless production techniques. They frequently tour worldwide and we are lucky enough to catch them at Concorde2.

The supporting DJ is Misanthrop; a dark drum’n’bass producer who claims his music is an expression of his experiences of human interactions. We’re not sure about this, but we do know he plays one hell of a warm-up set – slowly building energy, excitement and anticipation. We’re not normally fans of loud, disruptive, and frankly rubbish MCs, but the MC this evening (unfortunately he is unknown to us) does a fantastic job of holding back and not dominating the music, creating just the right atmosphere – we’re sure we even saw him asking the sound technician to turn him down a couple of times.

As Noisia take to the stage the crowd surges forward so that there’s no hope of dancing without brushing up against a sweaty, topless man or being ambushed by a girl’s unruly hair. But this is all part of the Noisia experience: the dark, emotional sounds need to be embraced and the best way to do that is to get involved in the crazy crowd and be a part of it. This set is not for the faint-hearted – we can feel the bass shaking us to our bones.

One thing we particularly enjoy is the variety of genres – Noisia move seamlessly from hard, fast, heavy drum’n’bass such as ‘Stigma’ to ‘Shellshock’ – an equally heavy but much slower and grimier track that they collaborated with Foreign Beggars on. Each song is received by the crowd with ‘gun fingers’ in the air and eyes to the sky, revelling in the intensity of Noisia’s music.

When the MC warns us that the next song will be the last we’re excited to hear what could possibly top what’s gone before. Then they play their remix of Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ – a classic electronic music anthem that people can scream along to and rave hard to. Noisia never disappoint.

Concorde2, Saturday 27th April 2013
Words by Esme Yules
Photos by Mike Tudor @ Studio85UK