What first drew you into music production and future bass in particular?
What first drew me in was Mad Zach playing his stuff on an Ableton Push. I wanted to do what he did live with controllerism. I had been using a loop pedal and guitar with vocals and really wanted to perform a fully produced sound live. So I started making playable drum racks and that’s how I started producing, not a very typical approach. I wanted to improve my production and sound design so I started making Trap and Future Bass. I seemed to be able to translate my creative ideas more effectively with Future Bass.
“Nikl” is a very unique producer name, how did you choose that name? Any special meaning behind it?
My middle name is Nicholas and I initially went by the name Niklus, but thought Nikl sounded better and more appropriate for an electronic music pseudonym.
Going over your Soundcloud we can tell you love making lots of different genres! Which genre is your favorite to produce?
My favourite genres to produce are Future Bass and Lo-fi hip hop. The more I produce different genres the better idea I get of how they come together, which helps me create something hopefully a bit more unique and fresh. When it comes to Lo-fi hip hop I love getting more in depth and creative with the sampling, for example taking a tiny element and making it into a subtle lead or atmosphere. Also, I like to use weird instruments and hardware synths to add to the dark and raw nature of it.
Your latest track “Memoir” is your best track in our opinion! From its artwork to the Incredibly powerful sound we absolutely love it. Could you tell us more about the story behind this track? Also, what is your creative process like?
Well, I called it Memoir as I wanted to express how life always seems to be more complicated than our narratives. When I have good memories of something I always have a slightly romanticised view of what happened and forget about the trivial stresses that were going on at the time. I try to think about that if I’m having a stressful day and helps me focus on the positive aspects. With Future bass, the creative process normally starts with me choosing a key and writing the chords and a lead line for the drop. Everything else comes together around that. I absolutely love using recordings I’ve made when visiting different countries, like Foley for beats and ambience samples. I mainly use Serum for the synth sounds. I also really like using world music samples like Indian woodwind and string instruments.
What are your musical goals for the future?
The main thing I’m focusing on is to keep building the Nikl brand and to be as prolific as possible. My main musical goals for the future are firstly to build a team to push it to the next level. Once I have fundamentally self released a catalogue of songs I’ll be approaching booking agents, managers, publishers and labels etc. Secondly to collaborate with more producers and vocalists and thirdly I would like to build a live show that involves live instruments and vocals as I come from a musician background playing in bands. My old funk band actually opened twice for Kool and the Gang. The all time goal is to be able to travel the world playing my music and making a humble living from it.
What are your goals for the summer? Any upcoming projects we can get excited about?
I’ll be dropping a new future bass track called ‘whoarethey’ at the end of this month. Also this summer I’ll be releasing another future beat in collaboration with vocalist, K Hurl. Finally, I’ll also be releasing a small lo-fi beat tape.
