His first solo album in five years lands November 6 on his own ONES and ZEROS label, and before it does, Alex Ridha is spending a week in Los Angeles, starting with a talk at the GRAMMY Museum on November 2.
Written by Eric B. Thornton
California has seen a lot of Alex Ridha lately, just rarely by himself. In April he was at Coachella with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as Nine Inch Noize, a top-billed debut that SF Gate called “one of the festival’s greatest performances of all time.” Last month he was in San Francisco with Skrillex, bringing Dog Blood to Portola for its first live performance since 2019. Somewhere in between, he toured arenas as special guest on Nine Inch Nails’ Peel It Back tour, 63 shows of it, and co-produced most of the TRON: Ares soundtrack, including the GRAMMY-winning Nine Inch Nails single “As Alive As You Need Me To Be.”
Now Boys Noize is stepping back out on his own. 7LLVSION, his eighth solo album and his first since 2021’s +/-, arrives Friday, November 6 via ONES and ZEROS, the label he launched in 2025 to push a new generation of artists from the Global North and South alike.
The first taste was “1+1+1” with ZEP, the Dutch multi-instrumentalist who came up throwing his own FUGAZZI raves in Rotterdam’s underground. It’s built on a menacing, key-shifting EBM bassline over a jittery new wave backbeat, and the four-on-the-floor kick doesn’t show up as a metronome. It shows up as a signal, the moment the mosh pit turns into a dancefloor. ZEP plays ringmaster over the top, snarling and shouting through lyrics about a guest list gone wild, and the music video dropped October 2.
The second single, “Nächstenliebe,” arrives October 29 with Brutalismus 3000, whose own album Ridha produced and co-wrote. The rest of the record pulls in ABRA, TAICHU, Maya Alkhatari, Safety Trance and Halsey, which fits a producer who has always worked across scenes. Ridha’s credits run from Frank Ocean and A$AP Rocky to Lady Gaga, and he’s currently scoring Replacer, the upcoming feature starring Halsey.
That’s a lot of collaboration for a so-called solo album, but that’s always been the Boys Noize way. He’s the rare artist who still plays Berghain every year and still headlines main stages, and the guest list on 7LLVSION reads like an attempt to put both of those worlds on the same record.
LA gets him up close first. On Monday, November 2, Ridha sits down for a conversation at the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. Live downtown, followed by a private, invite-only party later that week on November 5. After that, the album drops, and the dates come fast: Phoenix on November 6, Ultra Mexico City on the 7th, EDC Orlando on the 8th and Factory Town Miami on the 14th.
After a year of being the secret weapon in other people’s stories, Boys Noize finally gets to tell his own. Set your alarm for November 6!
Boys Noize, 7LLVSION, out November 6 via ONES and ZEROS. “Nächstenliebe” feat. Brutalismus 3000 out October 29. Boys Noize in conversation at the GRAMMY Museum, Los Angeles, Monday, November 2.