“As a songwriter and producer, I’m pretty interested in the origin of every sound within a beat.”

I love rap music. I originally started making rap beats to provide a foundation for these daily freestyle workouts I was doing last winter and spring. I have zero ambition to become a rapper, but freestyling is really good for you. It’s a tremendous mental workout that, I imagine, kick-starts creativity and general cleverness in social situations. It can also serve as a type of meditation and even a physical workout if you have the space.
 

Making beats for myself eventually morphed into just making beats for their own sake, pretty much every day. It’s addictive. As a songwriter and producer, I’m pretty interested in the origin of every sound within a beat. That’s why all the samples are original (except for the drum machines). Sometimes I sang or played something specifically for the beat, and other times I sampled some song I had recorded prior.

Niko Kwiatkowski is a musician and general magic-maker in Portland, Oregon. When he’s not creating music in one of his many projects, you can find him fighting wildfires around the Northwest.