Биография

Jim Noir's junkshop pop sound is a breezy amalgam of styles that range from the classic melodies of the Beatles to the plinky electronics of Kraftwerk with side trips into library music, schoolyard funk, and the kind of novelty songs that filled the airwaves in the '70s. Written and recorded by Noir himself, his early songs were beloved by advertisers like Adidas and Target thanks to their simple, smile-inducing hooks. His 2006 album, Tower of Love, is a definitive slice of mid-decade anything-goes pop; everything he did after that follows a similar template, though 2014's Finnish Line explores guitar-heavy British Invasion territory, and 2019's A.M. Jazz (and its corresponding EP, 2021's Deep Blue View) brings some light techno, orchestral easy listening, and soft rock into the mix. Born Alan Roberts in a suburb of Manchester, Jim Noir began playing music at an early age. Forming a duo with a pal named Batfinks, they bashed out versions of techno tracks by 808 State and Altern 8 on toy keyboards to the delight of their classmates. The pair soon discovered the Beatles thanks to a school play and Noir was soon on the path of making classic pop tracks with electronic underpinnings. He struck out on his own musically and, playing all the instruments himself (which he would continue to do), released an EP titled A Bird Sings in the Wool in 2003. The album gained notice from a local label, My Dad, and in 2004 and 2005, they released three EPs that brought Noir's sunny pop sound to a wider audience. His first album, 2005's Tower of Love, was mostly made up of songs from the EPs, plus a few newly recorded tracks. It was released on My Dad, then picked up by Atlantic Records in the U.K. and Japan, and Barsuk in the U.S. Noir's profile was boosted from the use of his songs "Tower of Love" and "Eenie Meany" in Adidas ads that ran nonstop during the 2006 World Cup. Another song from the album, "My Patch," was used in ads for Ginsters as part of Target's 2017 holiday campaign, and as theme music for the video game Little Big Planet. While this was going on, Noir was hard at work on another album and Jim Noir was issued in 2008 by My Dad and Barsuk. While the record didn't spawn any tracks advertisers wanted to use, it did expand and deepen Noir's home-cooked sound. Noir's next move was to record and release a series of EPs under the banner of The Noir Club. Each month over a 16-month span, he delivered a small slice of lo-fi poptronics to a select batch of subscribers. Some were newly recorded songs, some were collections of dusted-off rarities. The project marked a step away from working with record labels in favor of self-releasing music and that's what he did with his next album, 2012's Jimmy's Show, and with 2014's Finnish Line, a very Beatles-influenced record that boosted the guitars and cut back on lo-fi electronics. Noir took a break from making music under that name for a bit after the album's release. He worked with former Alfie guitarist Ian Smith -- and onetime member of Noir's live band -- on an electronic project named FAX, made an '80s-inspired electro album as Granada Personnel Recovery, helped on Whyte Horses' 2016 album Pop or Not, and placed a couple songs on the Eaten by Lions soundtrack. When it was time to record more Jim Noir music, he went back to his early style of lo-fi recording using whatever instruments he had on hand, improvising as he went along. The soft rock and easy techno-inspired A.M. Jazz was issued by Dooks Records in early 2020. Over the year that followed, Noir delved back into the sessions for A.M. Jazz and dug out some unused scraps and segments, revamping and polishing them in shiny synthetic fashion, even warmer and more easy to digest than the record they were originally meant for. The result is the six-song EP Deep Blue View, which was issued on Dooks in August of 2021. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi