flyover 11: tekk nikk
We sat down with Nikki Pfeifer, aka Tekk Nikk, to talk about her flyover mix, unseen realms, and her path to electronic music. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
JF: Thank you for contributing the mix! I think it's really fun. To start out, could you tell us a bit about your musical background?
NP: I started being classically trained in piano when I was two. I played piano ‘til I was about 16. I also played violin. I was classically trained in violin for about eight years after that. I played trumpet, I played French horn…
JF: That's a ton of instruments.
NP: Yeah. Once you pick up piano, it's a really good foundation for other instruments.
JF: Why did you move on to so many different instruments after learning piano?
NP: I'm a taskmaster, and I love taking on a new challenge. I get high off of it…learning new things has [always] been a pattern for me…but I don't always hold on to the thing long enough to master it. I'm usually onto the next thing.
JF: So [with piano], you got to a point where you felt comfortable with your skill level and wanted a new challenge?
NP: Exactly…It's how I'm wired. I think it helps to know what our astro chart is, what our numerology is, to understand how we're wired. Instead of evaluating, like, what's wrong with me, it just helps you understand, Oh, this is actually how I am, and it's okay. I have a Capricorn stellium and [the number] five heavily influences my life path in numerology. Rapid change, death and rebirth.
CS: That comes through even in this mix, it's totally different from anything that we've heard from you before.
JF: Has creating, performing, and playing music always been an important part of your life?
NP: It got there eventually. In grade school and high school, I was in all the choirs. When I graduated, my older brother told me I have a buddy, he's got a studio. He'll offer you free time. You should go in there and start writing. So that's when being a songwriter became a thing in my life. I was a bit of a late bloomer, I was about 23 when I started songwriting.
After that, I was hooked. I started integrating into the music scene here and really enjoying the creative process. The people who I met in the scene…it was [all] something that I didn't have access to growing up in New Ulm and Mankato, very rural areas of Minnesota.
JF: What kind of music were you performing when you first started?
NP: More on the baroque-pop tip. Very piano-based. It's not what I'm into now.
[Later on,] I started seeking out electronic music. A former band member guided me towards electronic instruments, like the Dave Smith Prophet ‘08, which is a monster, way too much for anybody first getting into synthesizers to handle. But that Prophet ‘08 was monumental. I had it pretty much the whole time I did Devata Daun, and haven't turned back from electronic music since.
JF: Could you tell us a bit more about that project? Like, the sound that y'all were going for?
NP: Yeah. When I started writing those pieces, I found a really run-down Casio at Goodwill, and I loved it. I could harness the sounds specific to that instrument. I started writing on that and then decided that I had enough tracks to put a record together. [I started] asking friends [to recommend] a good progressive electronic producer in town, and they all pointed me towards Ryan Olcott. And then, he and I wrote my record, and we started Pytch Records. We had a very specific sound using tape deviant effects and slowing down, pitching down with a tape machine. At the time we were calling it lo-fi electronic and future R&B.
JF: I know that you really like R&B.
NP: I grew up listening to R&B, [and] it heavily influences the undertones of how I write, and even this mix…there are a lot of R&B and soul flavors within the lineage of garage.
I grew up listening to TLC, Boyz II Men, some early Missy Elliot, Keith Sweat, Bell Biv DeVoe…just some of that good eighties, nineties, early two-thousands R&B. Aaliyah was a huge influence for me, and I still carry [that] on…not only in music [and] writing, but I love the moxie that [R&B] carries. I very much embody that. It's got sass, it's sexy.
When I pick tracks [I want] music that makes me move. If it doesn't make my hips and head twerk, it doesn't hold my interest for very long.
JF: You were working more on production before DJing. Why did you decide to switch to DJing as your primary outlet?
NP: I was in a creative rut with production. I felt a little stuck. Writing live sets as Tekk Nikk, doing live hardware sets, I was feeling exhausted from that. Writing a set is like writing a record. I felt that it was a good time to put that on the back burner in order to take DJing to the level that I’ve wanted to for so many years…I've been intimidated by the level of DJing that happens within friends and the local circle. I needed to set that aside so that I could put all my energy into DJing and learn on CDJs, learn on mixers, and really, really devote that time to those machines.
JF: What are you vibing with right now?
NP: A lot of UK labels. Breakbeats. Like, if it's got a breakbeat, I'm already drawn to it. And then if there's some garage and UK bass, some grime in there…
I've been trying to put this mix together for the last like four or five months and just couldn't get my shit together. And then all of a sudden, right before, like a week before I sat down to record this, I was able to find these tracks within like a couple of days.
CS: The majority of it?
NP: Almost all of it.
CS: Oh, wow.
NP: Yeah. I had a whole different tracklist at the beginning of summer…I just have changed so much through that time that I was like, No, that's not what I want anymore…it just came together in a very short amount of time.
JF: Why do you think it went like that?
NP: I zeroed in on the sound. I figured out what I really, really like. At the beginning of the year, I had a gig where I played a dub techno set. Then at Communion [in Minneapolis], I played a microhouse set.
JF: Do you see yourself sticking with this sound for a little bit?
NP: I'm gonna change probably tomorrow. That's just my M.O.
CS: If there's a connection with your spiritual side, how does that affect the trajectory of your music?
NP: I feel very connected to the unseen realms, and music…we can't see it, but we can sure fucking feel it. It makes you physically wanna do things. I think there's so much magic that you can do with trying to embody how your persona is, how your spirit is, and then trying to translate it to a dance floor. You're trying to communicate through an unseen form of communication.
It’s all spiritual. I don't know. I think we're all drawn to electronic and techno because there's alien DNA in us. It's a familiar way to talk to each other.
CS: Space music.
NP: Space music. Yeah. Alien presence.
JF: What do you mean there's alien DNA in us?
NP: We're all from the cosmos. That's my belief. There are pieces of us from other places. This is just part of our existence on this planet.
JF: We're all made of star stuff.
NP: We've all had out-of-body experiences on the dance floor. It's something you can't even put into words, it's like you're out of your physical self at that point. And that's what music is. It helps you get there.
Tracklist:
SSA - Move Into Light (Set Me Free) [2022]
Boddika - Heat [Swamp 81, 2013]
Beatrice Dillon and Call Super - Inkjet [Hessle Audio, 2017]
Sister Zo - Don’t Test Me [Scuffed Recordings, 2022]
Pangaea - New Shapes In The Air [HADAL, 2015]
Klein Zage - Absolutely (Ariel Zetina Remix) [Orphan Records, 2019]
Steffi, CYRK - Lublaby (Original Mix) [Burial Soil, 2022]
Rhyw - Just in Case [Seilscheibenpfeiler, 2020]
KIMIKO - Turbo [2020]
Law - Get Right [SAFE.RAVER, 2022]
Liebus - Where’s The Cat [Holding Hands Submerged, 2022]
Yaleesa Hall - Zoe Price [Will & Ink, 2018]
Boddika - Basement [Swamp 81, 2012]
Villager - Rave Bender [Pretty Weird, 2022]
Cadans - No Connection (Broken Mix) [Clone Basement Series, 2019]
Spectr, Bakongo - Off Guard [Hotflush Recordings, 2021]
Nikki Nair - Startrack [Pretty Weird, 2022]
Atonism - Trayectory [Warok, 2021]
Syz - Bunzunkunzun [Control Freak, 2020]
Anna Kost - Cr 22 [Who, Whom? / Hotflush Recordings, 2022]
Mosca - Shut Everything Down [Rent, 2022]
Ayesha - Ecstatic Descent [Scuffed Recordings, 2021]
KIMIKO - Like Hot Butterfly [2020]
Nikki Nair - 1overf [2022]
Fracture & Sam Binga - Conditional [Astrophonica, 2022]
LCY - Milan [SOS Music, 2020]
DJ Stingray 313 - Reverse Engineering [WéMè Records, 2012]
Carl Gari - Fred [Mother's Finest, 2020]
Bakonga & Scuba - Over Again (Hassan Abou Alam Percussive Tool) [Hotflush Recordings, 2022]
Julianna - The Flying Soda feat. Zadig [Nuits Sonores, 2022]
Yung.Raj - Buzzkill [Daytimers, 2021]
Nasty King Kurl - Complicated [Mother's Finest, 2020]
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