Sergio Calzoni (electronics) started this
music journey in 1998 together with Stefano Nieri (guitars).
After some line-up changes the band found in Michele Gozzi (electric bass)
the right chemistry to drive the groove engine of the project. Claudio
Pilati (acoustic drums) joined the band soon afterwards.
The music trajectories of Act Noir focus on trip-hop, psychedelic, ambient
but also Dark Wave and prog-rock in some cases… Anyway they like
to define their style as "psych-dark-rock".
From 2001 up to 2003 Sergio lived in Denmark.
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. Through an ad on a local newspaper Sergio
met Nicholas Hill, the singer of the space-rock band The Universals. His
outstanding vocal contributions tinge the Act Noir sound with dramatic
shades of living pathos.
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.
During 2004 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 “Automatisme
Psychique”.
The track “Unheimlich” is included in the Italian compilation
“k:goth” produced by Kronic, a very popular web-magazine here
in the Mafia country.
In December 2005 Act Noir signed a record
deal with My Kingdom Music, an italian-based label interested to release
the debut CD “Automatisme Psychique” released on March 3rd,
2006.
