Niko the Nuisance

I started djing back in 2024. My parents had gotten me a mixer the christmas of 2023 and prior to that I had been a musician all my life. For me the shift towards djing always made sense. It felt like that’s exactly where I'd end up after having created music for years. The need to learn also stemmed from me not enjoying the clubs I was going to. Early on in my journey I had been heavily into house, but not the “real” house that you can feel if that makes sense. I knew the classics but becoming a dj allowed me to dive deeper into what I already knew in order to learn more. I fell in love with 90s diva house specifically because of how powerful and soulful the vocals always were. It almost felt like a battle cry before going to throw down on the dancefloor and I was dying to tap into that and put that feeling into my mixes. I always come back to sound because of how reliable and communicative it is. People are so incredibly responsive to sounds and particularly the ones that evoke a maybe u familiar but delightful feeling in them. The goal is always to introduce new sounds to people and hope that they leave feeling better than they came in. I hope they go home and try to look up some of the songs they heard!

I was pretty rigid in what I was playing in terms of genre and stuck to a cool 120-125bm most of the time. Once I started putting myself out there and going to clubs in Bk there was definitely a shift. I dived head first into techno and never looked back! I did my homework which led to the discovery of techno having black roots and it felt so good because for years I had been told it was “white people shit”. That really did change everything for me. I found out I loved hardgroove and detroit techno specifically. As soon as I discovered all this, techno entered my sets immediately I did a full shift to being a more techno leaning dj. That’s currently where I am.

I go to the club and youtube!! An occasional festival as well. I really want to get to Movement in Detroit next years that’s the main goal. But I watch sets all the time from my favorite djs as well as djs I’m not as familiar with in the genres I love. Hearing sets from local ny djs are my absolutely favorite though. You can really feel how much the love what they do and how passionate they are. The one’s that come to mind right of the back are DJ Miss Parker, Kilopatrah Jones, DiM, 1Morning, LSDXOXO, and Blaize.

I hope they come away from it wanting to hear more music like what I played. I hope my set makes them hopeful, makes them feel like they have no choice but to get up and dance. No thinking just grooving. I think it’s most important to create a sort of escape in what you’re playing that your audience and you can get lost in.