"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.” - John Lennon

Noise Within singer / guitarist Boris Bouma is sitting in a downtown LA lockout stacked tot he ceiling with amps and guitars. He scratches his head and looks bewildered. "This place looked huge before we put our crap in it"

Bouma moved to Los Angeles in 1999, and landed a Record deal in 2001. After a quick peak at #34 in Billboard in 2002, he vanished from the public eye.

"“I had been dropped by Elektra, soon after which my band Epidemic called it quits. After a decade of blindly pursuing a dream, and then seeing it all fizzle like that, I was kind of, over it, you know?”

“I kept making music, but not in a group, let’s take over the world type of situation. I did stuff for a cartoon, some ring tones, music library kind of stuff.  I got a day job, and I worked from my home studio, which allowed me to accommodate my increasingly immense drug habit as well".

"I won't make you watch me masturbate and bore you with yet another cliché recovery story, but today I am pretty stoked that the story doesn’t end there.”


Why the comeback?


"I am doing this for my pleasure, at my convenience, and to save rock n roll", Boris deadpans. "Not to dismiss the music I made in the past, but Noise Within wasn’t created to secure fame or wealth. There was music before there ever was a band. John (Fahnestock of SNOT, AMEN, and LO-PRO) and Aaron (Slipp of Prong, Tad) lit a fire under my ass to go do a band again. John had been through way more devastating shit than me and was still going at it, which definitely put things in perspective for me.

What is different in 2009?


"The last band I was in received close to one million in advances. When you’ve been broke your entire life, it changes things. It becomes this awkward situation where you, on top of your band mates’ scrutiny, end up sculpting your music to keep the money coming. It’s not the label’s fault, but you’re catering to an imaginary audience, playing to what you perceive as the taste of your benefactor. As a writer, it is not only distracting, it ends up debilitating you”.


So change has made things less easy, but more pure?

“The lack of options (available record deals) also removed the need to torment myself searching for that “nursery rhyme” to attract potential investors. The glass is half full, and worrying about bills in stead of how to get to the chorus the quickest is not a bad place to be.”


About the dying industry, he raves. "I think it's awesome. Fans have been overcharged for years, and now stealing music is a natural result. Evolution is routing out the middlemen. Those that don’t adapt will go extinct. In the end, music WILL survive. There will always be music worth listening to. Like ours, which is free, might I add!”


Don’t musicians have to adapt as well?


“To a lesser extent, sure. You either do everything you can to be loved by everyone, or you don’t at all. We do the latter. Besides, the odds in rock n’ roll have pretty much remained the same: a few open slots on the Major’s rosters will go to Satan manufactured corporate manure, channeled through sleeve tattooed fashion models.“


“With the help of purchased Clear Channel time some of these puppets will make it overnight, the rest will return to manning the perfume counter at Macy’s. The rest of us will have to tour and sling T-Shirts for a living”