The Loop: NickNack
Beat music is a form that has grown out of various strains of electronic music, right in our backyard. Several local collectives are going strong with monthly live showcases and online compilations, and Texas Music Matters wants to shine a light on the scene. Each week, we’ll highlight a different artist and their music, and we’ll let them tell their own stories in order to put beat music into a Texas perspective—we’re calling it The Loop.
Nick Malkiewicz has become something of an elder statesman in the Austin beat scene through weekly live performances, mixtapes, and his label, Crowd Control Records. He’s been known as NickNack for almost two decades, and he’s released a handful of original albums that draw on his love of hip-hop and the scratching style of early DJs. But Malkiewicz is also an accomplished jazz musician, bringing his turntables and producer’s chair to the local jazz quintet Blaze. With all these varying ventures, NickNack’s music has its feet in several different genres at once. On this edition of The Loop, he talks about staying away from musical formulas, his latest album State Machine, and the inspiration he gets from Exploded Drawing events.
