Footwork, ASMR and Music Before the Internet: Body Promise Interviews Nico Niquo

Amelia and Doug are behind Body Promise, the Sydney-based FBi Click show that delves deep into the realms of techno and electronic every week to unveil the best going around. Nico Niquo is a producer from Melbourne, whose Epitaph LP from last year was on high rotation around here. The two recently crossed paths when Nico made a mix for Body Promise, and they'll cross paths again as they're both set to play our party this Thursday in Sydney.

For more information, check out our Facebook event, or if you've heard all you need to, you can RSVP here.

In anticipation, and to celebrate Nico's mix, Amelia interviewed Nico. Read the interview and hear the mix below.

It's super cold up in Sydney at the moment. Currently listening to your tracks next the heater with a big old blanket with one of those over priced candles burning. Goes quite nicely. Do you have a sense of space in mind when you're creating your music? Do you think your music complements one type of listening environment over another?

Nico: Sounds lush and comf—it's stupid cold in Melbourne, too. I've got the heater going too, with the cats down the end of the bed keeping my feet warm, listening to that new Huerco S. album (I'd say this is listen number 100 or so by now). I don't have specific spaces in mind for listening to the music while I'm making it, but I'd say the particular environment definitely informs it. I'll make music in bed, in the garden, on the train, even at an airport. Even though there may be other people around, it's definitely a solitary experience. Maybe the best place for listening is a space inside your mind, away from everything?

One of the only mixes you have available online is the one you did for Metamine Lab over a year ago, which is fab btw, is super sparse and atmospheric and perfect for home listening. Curious to know how you reconcile what you play in the club vs. mixes you make for home listening. Where do you think the crossovers lie?

Glad you like the mix! Even though it's all beat-less and ambient, most of the tracks I chose are by artists who are most well-known for their work within the dance music world, be it techno, jungle, electro or something else entirely, and this is often the kind of stuff I'd go to first for playing out in a club environment. But what I've found listening to their albums is that so much of their best work (in my opinion) often isn't recognised as much because it doesn't align with the music people typically expect from them. And that's not to say people don't like the more free-form, away-from-the-floor stuff, because it's still very much part of that world, but say if you were to ask someone what type of music T.J. Hertz makes as Objekt, the first response would probably be "techno, dubstep," that kind of thing. I chose to string together a bunch of less well-known tracks with some more pronounced "ambient" artists in what I thought would be a more inviting home-listening experience. Save (some of) the rollers for the club.

You can hear a lot of influences in your work from other genres and styles of music but you have used them in a really interesting way, which results in tracks that don't neatly fit in any one realm.To me it appears as though you glean ideas from a number styles and and output them in different environment to where one might usually expect them to sit. How does listening to other types music inform your creative process?

I can't remember who I was talking to about this kind of stuff, but something we came around to was the idea of "cultural touchstones" within what people tend to broadly refer to as internet-specific music. For a generation that can still remember a time before the internet really penetrated our consciousness but weren't around to experience a completely offline life as an adult, it seems like we tend to pick and choose from things in a less scene-specific way, without some of the prejudices of the past. We find patterns and themes in music, visual art, design that seem quite unrelated at face value, but condense it into a form that is instant and immediate, belonging to the medium in which we uncovered it. I think one more odd combination I've really become interested in recently is the pairing the eski bass synths of grime or really spacious footwork percussion with guitars, clarinets and other acoustic instruments (but all fake and plastic, of course).

There seems to be a nice lil gang of you down in Melbourne making this atmospheric and almost cinematic music like Felicity Yang, Makeda, Waterhouse, Corin. Is there something about Melbourne as a space/location that inspires this kind of music making?

I don't know if it's something specific to Melbourne, but it is really nice to have come across other people operating in a similar area! Felicity and I met at uni, along with Ayten (who makes music with Felicity as AIYA), OBA, Joseph, Darcy Baylis and Elkkle, and a whole bunch of others. A lot of us began exploring more unusual forms of electronic music alongside each other, perhaps encouraged and influenced by what we were hearing and seeing around us in the others. Until I started going out into the real world and doing shows with people like ju ca and Hyde (Electric Sea Spider), I hadn't really met other people operating in other fringe areas like those others you mentioned. But I guess like Sydney, Melbourne's very multicultural and international environment has allowed for all of these people from very different cultural backgrounds to meet and exchange ideas, inspirations and dreams.

It feels like your music goes beyond being purely just a listening experience, it feels quite bodily. How much do other elements of your life or other senses like touch and sight inform what you make?

I remember while at university we often had guest speakers who'd talk to us about their overlapping sensory awareness or "synaesthesia." I don't think I've ever really experienced something in the way those people expressed it, though I do think the explosion of ASMR into the public last year was pretty fascinating. But as I've matured a bit and my listening habits have evolved, I've definitely noticed that certain music can illicit pretty intense reactions—but mostly visual, inside the "mind's eye." For me, listening to Darren Cunningham's music as Actress initiates this the most, closely followed by Oneohtrix Point Never and Call Super. Perhaps it's the textural quality of the music, or maybe something more mysterious within their creative process. It's that which I'm always trying to achieve in my music, I'm eager to see how people respond to what I have lined up for later in the year.

Body Promise and Nico Niquo are both playing this Thursday's THUMP Party at The Chippendale in Sydney, alongside Alba and Phile. RSVP here.