Act Noir

Mitglieder:
- Sergio (electronics)
- Stefano Nieri (guitars)
- Michele Gozzi (bass)
- Claudio Pilati (drums)
- Nicholas Hill (vocals)
Gründugsjahr:
1997
1997-1998
Sergio & Valerio (Alma Mater)
ACT NOIR born from the ashes of ALMA MATER. Sergio Calzoni (electronics) started this new project in order to explore music soundscapes far from the electro-symphonic-bombastic moods of Alma Mater. The music trajectories of Act Noir focus on trip-hop, psychedelic, ambient but also techno and prog-rock in some cases… Anyway they like to define themselves as a psych-synth-rock band.

1998-1999
The first member joining Act Noir was Stefano Nieri (guitars). After some line-up Michele Gozzi (electric bass) the right chemistry to drive the “rhythmic-groove-engine” of the project. Claudio Pilati (acoustic drums) joined the band soon afterwards, initially playing only during live performances. In this period the band worked with the singer Elisabetta Bevilacqua, who left the project at the end of 2001.

1999-2000
Lot of rehearsals, in order to find some sort of music identity. During the same period Act Noir performed live in different occasions, experience that helped a lot to find more cohesion and refine the structure of the songs.

2001
Sergio moved to Copenhagen. Thanks to an ad on a local newspaper he met Nicholas Hill, singer of the space-rock band The Universals, and started to work on the lyrics for the many songs composed. His outstanding vocal contributions, tinge the Act Noir sound with dramatic shades of living pathos…
Thanks to his home-studio, set it up in a weird container-house, and to God Internet, Sergio managed to continue a virtual collaboration with his Italian friends/musicians.

2002
During the "Danish exile" Sergio started a side-project called ARTRA, by means of which he composed a sonorization for the performance/installation “Nika Is Dead” based in Copenhagen. The proposed music was an almost two hours assemblage of brand new experimental-ambient pieces, and several unfinished tracks taken from the Act Noir archive. A seven minutes movie with excerpts of the music score has been edited of such installation, visit the download page for an MPG version of it.

2003
The first Act Noir demo-CD “Cosmo Minimized E.P.” is issued. Unexpectedly the five tracks included received very positive reviews and feedbacks, that gave confidence to the band to continue in the composition process of new tunes.
In late autumn the Italian cult band MonumentuM commissioned to Act Noir the remix of the track “Distance”. The remix is included in “Metastasi”, album containing rarities and various unreleased material of MonumentuM.

2004
The track “Unheimlich” is included in the Italian compilation “k:goth” produced by Kronic, a very popular web-magazine here in the Mafia country…
The band works hard both in Italy and in Denmark to complete the production/mixing phase of the whole bunch of songs to be included in their debut album.

2005
Following the bankruptcy of the German label Resonancer, in December 2005 Act Noir signed a new record deal with the Italian label My Kingdom Music.
The deal consists in the release of the long awaited debut CD “Automatisme Psychique”.
Street date scheduled for the 3rd of March 2006.