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Alexander Ridha – aka Boys Noize – can’t stop blowing his nose, but it ain’t because of coke. When asked if he’s been doing blow all day, the straight-edged electro producer laughs and says, “No, never in my life.” The 25-year-old says he’s stays away from the substances, though he’s no stranger to the long-standing relationship between drugs and dance music. “I was already in the scene so I’ve seen a lot of people go up and down very quickly,” he says over the phone from his home in Germany. “It sounds cheesy because I was so young, but it’s the truth,” he says. “So for me [staying clean] has always been easy.”

As Ridha, he released tracks for big-hitting dance labels Kitsune, Datapunk, and Turbo; and since going under the name Boys Noize five years ago, he has continued an impressive career run. “I’ve already been DJing for ten years, and it wasn’t until the past four years that things got crazy,” he says. How crazy? Well, artists such as Feist, Tiga, and even Depeche Mode have asked him to remix their songs.

In fact, more than 90 percent of Ridha’s current workload is remix requests from the artists themselves, but he was still shocked when Depeche Mode got in touch. “That was really special for me because I am a big fan,” he says. “I went to their concert in Berlin [2006], and days after the manager told me the members loved my stuff and they wanted a remix.” He cut a danced-up version of the record Personal Jesus after the band sent him more than 120 raw tracks to work with. “It was crazy,” recalls Ridha. “It was like [Dave Gahan] was standing next to me singing.” He pauses. “I felt goose bumps.” 

Before being recruited by the big dogs, Ridha was an aspiring teenage drummer – until he broke his arm skateboarding. The rest of his adolescence was spent working in Hamburg at his hometown record shop, Underground Solutions, where he could easily get his hands on cutting-edge house and techno records. “The boss actually hired me because I was in there every day,” recalls Ridha, who met long time friend Andy TK, aka D.I.M., in the shop. “Andy was already doing music and I had some programming experience, but I learned a lot of engineering from him.” Ridha worked with D.I.M. before starting Boys Noize Records, an independent dance label to which his friend is now signed.

The biggest break for Boys Noize Records was in 2007 when Ridha dropped his album Oi Oi Oi, receiving almost universal critical acclaim. Each track packs an electro-tech punch with forceful and zingy beats overlapped with heavy distortion. Robotic vocals feature prominently in Oh! and in the Feist remix, My Moon My Man, while other tracks combine a dynamic mixture of electro and rock. Although Lava Lava is Ridha’s favourite track on the album, & Down attracted all the glory with its catchy “Dance Dance Dance” lyrics, heavy distortion, and keyboard chime-ins. Produced using only analogue equipment, the album is a towering achievement for dance music.

But not everyone warmed to the vigorous, in-your-face tracks. “In Germany I got a really shitty [review],” Ridha confesses. He wasn’t surprised. Justice’s album got the same treatment from the publication (he declined to name it) months before Oi Oi Oi dropped. “It was something like: ‘Another Justice – we don’t need it.’ It was more a diss than a bad review.” Regardless of the crap he got from local critics, Ridha recalls the success of the album release party in Berlin. “We didn’t do anything [for the party]: no fliers, no posters, no advertising, nothing – just word of mouth, and it was completely packed.”

It’s not every day an artist can start his own label and achieve recognition so early into the game. The boy’s certainly got talent, but he’s also had some useful opportunities early in his career. “I’ve had some experience with other labels, even major [ones]. That’s helped me a lot because now I know more of what I want and what I definitely don’t want.”

What’s cool is that he has the freedom to do what he wants – which is to concentrate on the production side of things. “Remixing is great and easy for me to do because there’s already music to work with, but I want to be creative again,” he says, joking that he can’t be a DJ forever. That’s good news for music lovers; it seems we’ve got reason enough to be excited for a while yet. Says Ridha: “I’m a musician and I’m going to do my music until I die.” Tina Lee