Modular & Audio present the return of:
Noir
(Noir Music // Denmark)
Pedro Arbulu
(Modular // Peru // US)
Menno
(Sound Advice // US)
Noir Bio
“I was 8 years old,” remembers René ‘Noir’ Kristensen, “looking at a poster of Duran Duran outside the Eiffel Tower, and telling my mother that when I was older, I wanted to be a musician, traveling the world like they did.” In the three decades since that day, the softly spoken Dane has achieved all that and more. One of the planet’s most in demand house DJs and the man behind a hugely successful and pioneering label, he’s also the man responsible for one of the decade’s biggest house tracks so far, 2011’s global club smash ‘Around’. The track, a sexy, synthesizer-tinted groove featuring vocalist Hayze, was by far the biggest of Noir’s career to date. Picked up by house giants Defected, it dominated dancefloors across the world for nearly 18 months – and didn’t just catapult Noir to the front rank of producers and DJs but Solomun (whose subtle, sexy remix became the definitive version) as well.
But then Noir’s mission to spread the house music word started early. René was raised in the quiet, close-knit city of Aalborg in Northern Denmark, a town shot through with the peculiarly Scandinavian quality of Janteloven (rule one: “don’t think you’re anything special”). Very much the youngest of three children, his father a smith and his mother a cleaning lady, there was, he says, “no music in the family.” A friend’s big brother, however, had a huge vinyl collection. At 7 years old, when his schoolclass was asked to bring in a tape of their favourite music, René first demonstrated his gift for the unexpected. “All the other kids were bringing in children’s music,” he remembers, “I played Kraftwerk!”
By age 8-10 he was collecting Duran Duran posters and at age 10-12 listening to UK radio stations playing the first wave of acid house, and by 13, like so many European teens, he was a Depeche Mode diehard. A gifted teenage football player, he had offers from some big local teams, but says he “knew really early that he wanted to create music and express myself.” It was a club called Rendez Vouz that gave him his chance aged 17. “I filled in maybe 5 or 6 times before they asked me to DJ regularly. I told the owner that I would only do it if I could buy all the music for the club and decide the music style.” Soon he was playing three nights a week. As the upper floor DJ, playing “50% house, 50% R&B and hip hop” to the notoriously late arriving, early leaving Danish club crowd, he developed a philosophy of DJing that remains to this day. “The guys that played before me, they played what was given to them via paid promo-service – I bought a lot of music myself to stand out and to push it forward, keep it interesting.” This passion for new music, this wish to give the crowd something unique every time, has never left him.
