Nikki Nair – once upon

Atlanta’s Nikki Nair is sort of unmatched when it comes to creating dexterous and ever mutating formulations of breakbeats and club sounds. Defining Nair’s work per-se is nearly impossible, in the span of three minutes he could surge from footwork to drill’n’bass to dubstep and back again. Last year’s excellent More Is Different pretty much summed up Nair’s manic kitchen sink approach. Where such a litany of ideas could quickly warp into unbearable chaos in a lesser producer’s hands, in Nair’s it becomes play dough to shape and reshape his twisted ideations of the dancefloor. In many ways, whatever he creates exists in a cosmos entirely of its own. The sheer breadth of his repertoire is remarkable, as is the near mathematical way his brain forges connections between his influences. It’s possibly why he releases music in a steady stream of singles and short and snappy EPs, feeding us content in the same velocity of his BPMs. 

Having recently launched his own label n goes to infinity, Nair’s latest singles have been some of his hardest to date. It’s all part of his and infinity’s modus operandi, to make music that “makes you feel like your head is being melted.” once upon is, expectedly, a head-melter. Nair builds his rollercoaster around a modulating synthline ripped from the techno pages of Röyksopp, taking the simple arpeggio through a whirlwind of places. He begins with sinister, chugging bass and just as once upon feels like it may settle, he melts it into complextro before throwing it toward sparse post-dubstep wobbles, concluding with a shuddering glitch outro. Truthfully, it’s one of his less saturated works, but it’s totally exhilarating and propulsive. Soaked in a sort of seedy griminess with the sci-fi headspin of his lead riff zooming through space at hyperspeed, once upon is Nair at his head melting nastiest. 

Listen to once upon below. Download the single here

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