| Our algorithmic age can feel like a perpetual now, with linear time – and thus trends – collapsing into a recursive multitude of subcultural revivals. This paradigm shift is of no concern for the German-Iraqi artist, DJ, producer, and composer Boys Noize (Alex Ridha); he’s been shifting paradigms his entire career. And with today’s release of his seventh album, 7LLVSION, Boys Noize shatters the hall of mirrors with a vision of culture to come. Listen and experience 7LLVSION for yourself. The twelve-track 7LLVSION LP closes a monumental year for Ridha, marked by extensive collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Boys Noize joined the Nine Inch Nails world tour, co-produced the group’s TRON: Ares soundtrack (and its GRAMMY-winning single), and formalized this new collective with the top-billed Coachella debut of NINE INCH NOIZE. All the while, Ridha had been developing the iconoclastic sound that would become 7LLVSION, a collision of past and future with enough forward momentum to escape an endless present. The album opens with “Illusion,” its title spoken in the Boys Noize signature vocoder before a 1/2 kick-snare booms in as a vehicle for buzzing, detuned oscillators. The track may be 140 bpm, but it’s not techno. A shock of rock ‘n’ roll is back in the club, and once again Ridha is leading the charge. “1+1+1” comes next, featuring Dutch artist ZEP’s punk snarls over a vicious step-sequenced bassline that tastes like sweat. Nodding to EBM pioneers DAF, these “arp storms” (as Ridha describes them) appear throughout the album, including on the Brutalismus 3000 collaboration “Nächstenliebe.” Infectious and galvanizing, the motoric leads set the pace for Ridha’s unorthodox departure from the straight-fours rhythmic standard. There’s New Wave drumming, mid-tempo D-beats, and, in the case of “Nächstenliebe,” a half-time dirge that builds to full-speed frenzy alongside the German shouts of B3K’s frontwoman. Choosing 7LLVSION’s tracklist, Ridha insisted that he “should be able to play every song on the album in a live set without question.” Recently he’s done exactly that to raucous, unhinged reception. “Take Me Out,” with its timeless Mississippi blues shuffle, stands out for its ability to suddenly transform staid techno crowds into hedonistic tableaux of bikers and cowgirls at Hell’s best strip club. Boys Noize’s synths are piled on so thick they replace all the air in the room with a kind of vibrating solid, and the cadence is both so familiar and so unexpected that the psyche splits, inhibitions spilling into a puddle on the floor. The album may be a mosh-pit from start to finish, but guests from across the globe make repetition impossible. Brazil’s avant-garde funkeiro Adame DJ assists on the Volt Mix-driven “Baile DF,” and post-Soviet electro-punk kings Locked Club deliver a fluttering, high-pressure blast of sub bass on peak-time banger “Wake Me Up.” Two returning collaborators appear on “I Need Luv,” with Abra lending vocals to an accelerated, dembow-dustrial track crafted with Venezuelan Safety Trance. Argentine alt-star TAICHU raps over “Shut it Down,” a deranged analogue stepper that shifts from trash can drums to Latin Tec to Wavecore bounce. Sometimes, a machine contributes to a track with its own uncanny, lifelike agency. On “Sh5b0mb,” the uncalibrated transistors of a half-century-old synth warp and moan like an animal as they heat, bending a whole step out of key. Ridha incorporates these “revisions” too, suggested by his mechanical elder. 7LLVSION consistently presents a singular (and hard) style that is Ridha’s own, but on the penultimate track “Ycore” Ridha seems to invent an entirely new genre. Here, the Arabic vocals of Mayah Alkhateri float over a Coldwave bassline and Robin Guthrie-esque guitar strums, the she’s-a-maniac beat running faster than its 150 bpm, sidechained melancholic poly-saw pads suggesting trance at the end of the world. Forget working together, none of these elements should exist together. Yet “Ycore” is exhilarating, breathtaking, pure frisson. Not like the dopamine hits we are bombarded with countless times daily – that system is exhausted. Boys Noize taps into something else, adrenaline and oxytocin and other neurotransmitters the club has forgotten in this time of optimization and refinement. 7LLVSION is not an album for ‘now;’ everyone is bored of now, now feels unreal, now feels directionless. 7LLVSION points both towards the past and the future, because direction itself is what we need most of all. And where Boys Noize goes, the rest always follow. ABOUT BOYS NOIZE:
Boys Noize (Alex Ridha) is a singular figure in 21st-century electronic music culture. The German-Iraqi artist, DJ, producer, and composer embraces and transcends contradictions—a cross-genre bridge-builder respected by techno purists, and a global headliner who never left the underground. Ridha is masterful on the decks and inimitable in the studio, crafting songs for strikingly diverse talents including A$AP Rocky, Bon Iver, Frank Ocean, Arca, Virgil Abloh, Lady Gaga, and Brutalismus 3000. He has been featured alongside Keinemusik, Shygirl, Kelsey Lu, Rico Nasty, and VTSS; remixed Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, Miley Cyrus, Tame Impala, The Chemical Brothers, and A.G. Cook; and scored the hit German hacker film Who Am I (2014), Oliver Stone’s Snowden (2016), and the forthcoming Replacer, starring Halsey. He co-founded the duo Octave Minds with Chilly Gonzales, and actively produces and performs with Skrillex as Dog Blood. For Ridha, this long, accomplished career was merely the foundation for something bigger. In 2025 and 2026, Boys Noize performed alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross throughout Nine Inch Nails’ Peel It Back tour, and co-produced the near-entirety of the TRON:Ares soundtrack, including the GRAMMY® Award-winning single “As Alive As You Need Me To Be.” The trio’s collaboration was formalized with the announcement of Nine Inch Noize, debuting with a top-billed, viral Coachella set that SF Gate called “one of the festival’s greatest performances of all time.” The Nine Inch Noize LP was released the same week to critical acclaim. Perhaps Pitchfork’s review said it best: “Every song on the album slaps.” As a solo artist, Boys Noize continues to be an active presence in the culture, with his eighth solo album 7LLVSION arriving in the fall of 2026. Throughout his rise from clubs to festivals to stadiums, Ridha has ceaselessly supported the underground through his labels Boysnoize Records and the recently launched ONES and ZEROS, focusing on a new generation of global talent from the Global North and South alike. His punk ethos has kept him fully independent, raw talent keeps him in-demand, and obsession keeps him future-proof. No other artist traverses musical worlds like Boys Noize, and while his sound cannot be replicated, his formula is simple: embrace everything, compromise nothing. BOYS NOIZE ON TOUR:
November 06 – Phoenix, USA @ OBSIDIAN
November 07 – Mexico City, MX @ ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL
November 08 – Orlando, USA @ EDC ORLANDO (w/ Brutalisumus 3000)
November 08 – Orlando, USA @ EDC ORLANDO AFTERPARTY
November 13 – Washington D.C. @ ECHOSTAGE (w/ Brutalisumus 3000)
November 14 – Miami, USA @ FACTORY TOWN
November 27 – BANGKOK, TH @ TOGETHER FESTIVAL
November 28 – Zhuhai, CN @ VAC FESTIVAL
November 29 – Zhuhai, CN @ VAC FESTIVAL AFTERPARTY
December 18 – Berlin, DE @ BERGHAIN (w/ Brutalismus 3000)
December 28 – Perth, AU @ RADAR FESTIVAL
December 30 – Hesse, AU @ BEYOND THE VALLEY
January 01 – Sydney, AU @ FIELD DAY
January 01 – Melbourne, AU @ LET THEM EAT CAKE
January 02 – Brisbane, AU @ RADAR FESTIVAL
January 26 – 31 Miami to Harvest Caye, Belize @ EDSEA CRUISE
March 12 – Buenos Aires, AR @ LOLLAPALOOZA ARGENTINA
March 12 – Santiago, CL @ LOLLAPALOOZA CHILE
March 19 – Sao Paulo, BR @ LOLLAPALOOZA BRASIL
March 19 – Bogota, CO @ FESTIVAL ESTERO PICNIC
March 14 – Las Vegas, USA @ EDC LAS VEGAS
March 21 – Las Vegas, USA @ EDC LAS VEGAS More dates to be announced. Boys Noize – 7LLVSION
(ONES and ZEROS)
OUT NOW Boys Noize – “Illusion“
Boys Noize & ZEP – “1+1+1“
Boys Noize – “Take Me Out“
Boys Noize – “Nächstenliebe“ feat. Brutalismus 3000
Boys Noize – “HYYTUP”
Boys Noize & Adame DJ – “Baile DF” feat. Thalia Abdon, MC DA FRANÇA
Boys Noize & Locked Club – “Wake Me Up“
Boys Noize & Safety Trance – “I Need Luv“ feat. ABRA
Boys Noize – “Sh5b0mbe“
Boys Noize – “Shut It Down“ feat. TAICHU & Taube
Boys Noize – “Ycore“ feat. Mayah Alkhateri
Boys Noize – “Sireneh“ Follow Boys Noize:
https://www.boysnoize.com
https://instagram.com/boysnoize
https://www.tiktok.com/@boysnoize
YouTube
Spotify
https://onesandzeros.com |
Boys Noize – “Illusion“