Noisia was three people: Nik Roos, Thijs de Vlieger, Martijn van Sonderen. Based in Groningen, Netherlands. Active from 2000 to 2022. In those 22 years they produced more original sound design than any other group in drum & bass history. When they retired, the genre felt smaller for it.

The contribution

Before Noisia, neurofunk basslines were mostly synth presets and distortion. Noisia treated every bassline as a custom sound design problem: layered samples, granular processing, careful EQ work that meant every Noisia record had a distinct sonic fingerprint within the first eight bars.

The label work

Vision Recordings, their imprint, signed and developed Mefjus, Hybris, Imanu (now IMANU), Posij, Buunshin, June Miller. The Vision sound was always Noisia-adjacent: clean masters, weird textures, room for negative space. Most of the dominant neuro producers of the late 2010s came up on Vision.

The split

They announced retirement in 2020 and finished out the touring schedule through 2022. The reasons given were the usual: creative burnout, individual ambitions, the desire to do other things while still capable of doing other things. They have stayed friends. The break was clean.

What it left behind

IMANU has become a global headliner. Buunshin is producing some of the most exciting crossbreed records of the moment. Mefjus, Phace and the wider Vision family are the dominant sound on neuro stages. Every one of them learned at the Noisia school. The label remains active under its new ownership and is still pushing.

The catalogue is finished. The influence is not.