Noisia’s first album in six years, Outer Edges, was scheduled to be released on September 16, however they’ve just released the full album on their website due to an unauthorised leak last Friday. Even though Noisia stated that they weren’t happy with the leak as it messed up all of their release plans, they’ve made the decision to release it early due to their philosophy that if their music is available somewhere, it should be available everywhere. For that reason, they released the album today on their website, this Friday on all major online stores and September 16th for the physical releases and merch.
Unfortunately leaks do happen, and this reaction is commendable at the very least. Anyway, onto the album.
In short, it’s insane. Even though they are seen as the leaders of sound design in bass music, the entire purpose of Outer Edges was to push themselves to the outer edges of their sound, and take every song on the album as far as they could. They’ve well and truly achieved this, with each of the 18 songs having a distinct purpose and sound. They explore most tempos, from Dubstep to Drum and Bass to House territories, even incorporating a bit of mid tempo. Most of the album contains a serious amount of bass, with sound designs that will make your jaw drop, ears stop working and head explode.
Made clear by Noisia themselves, the album is not DJ or radio friendly, so if that’s what you want you’ll be disappointed. What Outer Edges is, is an album for all of the bass junkies and people who like to hear experimentation in music. Noisia have just polished this experimentation off into an album. Each song can essentially be summed up as an idea that Noisia pushed to its extreme while (mostly) remaining palatable. “Mostly” meaning that Outer Edges is an incredible album if you like and appreciate inordinate amounts of extremely well designed bass.
You can listen to previews of the album here as well as download it.