FEATURE: Spotlight: Nia Archives — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Nia Archives

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IT is the time of the year…

where artists are planning their new albums and there is a lot of buzz around new artists. In terms of the ones to watch this year, Nia Archives should be on everyone’s radar. Included in NME’s prestigious list of the one-hundred artists to look out for, it seems that 2022 is a time when Nia Archives is going to come to the big stages and the attention of a wider audience. I am going to explore a few other artists on NME’s 2022 radar. I have known about Nia Archives’ work for a while. Her story and career arc is fascinating. I love her music. It is exciting to imagine how far she can go. NME were full of praise for her (“Raised on a steady diet of reggae, rocksteady and old-school jungle, Nia Archives’ dancefloor-ready nu-jazz packs in every one of her diverse influences. The resulting belters, like the spectacular single ‘Forbidden Feelings’, make for a fresh and vibrant new sound”). I wanted to combine some interviews with Nia Archives. It gives us a chance to discover more about such an interesting and inventive young artist. Before coming to deeper interview, she chatted with Fred Perry a while ago. It is a question-and-answer about her music favourites, firsts and tastes:

“Name, where are you from?

Nia Archives - Manchester, but I’m currently living in East London.

Describe your style in three words?

Casual, reworked, retro.

Which subcultures have influenced you?

Black British culture has shaped me both culturally and musically as an individual. Growing up with a mixed heritage; I have always been proud of my British and Jamaican roots. From young, I was exposed to so many different types of music like reggae, gospel, soul and jungle. Being a northerner has also played a part. Originally I’m from West Yorkshire, but I moved to Manchester in my teens and really experienced that true northern soul there. Equally coming down to London, I find inspiration from just being in the city. The UK rave culture has had a big influence on me and my music, I love raving and the history that surrounds the underground scene.

Your greatest unsung hero or heroine in music?

I absolutely adore Jennifer Lara, her tunes are so real; I just love her vibe. I am inspired by Kemistry, DJ Flight and Sherelle, they are all wicked. What they represent is massive, and it is great to see black women taking up space. Also, shout out Zsa Zsar, she is crucial to the scene and the loveliest person you will meet.

A song lyric that has inspired you?

"Don't you know, talkin' bout a revolution sounds like a whisper..."

From 'Talkin' Bout A Revolution' by Tracy Chapman.

The song that would get you straight on the dance floor?

'Rodent' by Burial.

A song you wished you had written?

'He Can Only Hold Her' by Amy Winehouse.

Best song to turn up loud?

'Keep The Fire Burning' by The House Crew.

A song people wouldn’t expect you to like?

'This Must Be The Place' by Talking Heads.

Best song to end an all-nighter on?

'New Forms' by Roni Size”.

In May last year, UKF wanted to know more about the amazing Nia Archives. Although she is an experimental artist, there is something hugely accomplished and multifaceted about her. A professionalism and sense of structure one can hear and see in her music – and will ensure that she is a legend of the future:

“Producer, singer, songwriter, filmmaker – you name it, Nia could be considered any of them. You may have heard her dreamy neo soul vocals flittering on top of hectic breakbeats, or you could have caught a glimpse of her nostalgic rave-style videos as you scroll through your Instagram feed. Either way, once you experience what Nia is about you’ll more than likely be hooked.

Brought through last year by the awesome EQ50 mentorship helping womxn to progress in jungle and drum and bass, Nia has since been developing into an artist with a real understanding behind her music. With a heritage founded on Caribbean sound system culture, combined with her teenage years spent writing albums worth of music for fun, it feels like music has always been the destined path for Nia – a dream she is finally living.

As rubbish as lockdown has been, it seems like it has launched your career…

It’s mad. Sometimes I think about it and I’m like – wow… During lockdown I’ve been focusing on making music and creating. I don’t think anyone will ever have this much time again, so I’ve tried to make the most of it. I’ve been able to create lots of little videos to go alongside my music too.

That was one of the first things to catch my attention – the archive rave-style videos of you going around London.

I started doing it for fun a couple of years ago. I got this Sony Handycam and began filming everything. My memory is really bad, so I like to capture moments on video. I’ve loved making videos since I was a kid. I started adding my own music onto the videos and that allowed me to show everyone what I’ve been producing. That’s how I got the archives name. I love ‘90s VHS and rave documentaries, so I was trying to emulate that.

It’s that whole sense of rave nostalgia we’re all clinging onto right now!

Definitely. It’s a nostalgia of something I never experienced, but I feel like I’ve always been a part of. I also love the idea of documenting what my mates and I are doing in life. It’s funny because my friend Ann-Lucille is in most of my videos, and when I first met her at the start of uni I was documenting everything. Two years later, it’s so nice to look back over the footage and what has happened. It’s good to have those memories on tape.

You strike me as someone who is just experimenting and having fun with your music.

It’s all about experimenting and having fun. If you’re not enjoying your music then what are you doing? I see making beats like playing a video game where I’m trying to get all these little sounds to match. It’s like going through levels. Especially with the way I make my drums, I have this formula I do to create the sound I want.

It was a mega debut EP! The reaction has been great.

I’m still processing that too… I’m glad people are vibing to it. I’m happy it’s released because now I can start making new music. Releasing music is a physical process, but it’s also a mental / emotional process getting it out there so that I can move on.

So rolling back the years, where do your musical influences originate from? I see you’ve got a Jamaica flag behind you!

I’m half Jamaican, so that heritage has been a big part of my life. I went to Pentecostal Church as a kid, so I’ve grown up listening to gospel. Reggae was always on in my house too alongside hip-hop, lovers rock and bashment. Even jungle was. My Nanna loves jungle, so our family parties would go from lovers rock to jungle… Back then I was around all this music, but I didn’t really know what it was. I’ve always had those cultural influences. Moving from the north to London has been a big influence for me too. I get a lot of my sound inspiration from being in the city.

Awesome. Looking ahead, what’s next for you?

I’ve got a couple of remixes coming up and I’m working on my next EP. After that, I’d love to start looking towards an album. Next year, I want to really delve into gigging and continue creating. I’ve got so much music in the archives ready to go, it’s just a case of working out how I want to present it. I see each music project like an art piece. It’s not just the music, it’s also the visuals complimenting it.

I’d also love to start DJing vinyl. I want to start collecting loads of sick jungle records as I think it would be a great experience. I don’t think a USB slaps the same as holding a vinyl. If I play on vinyl I can get a little effects pedal too”.

I am going to end with a great feature and interview from Mixmag. Last month, they spent some time with Nia Archives. This is a hugely creative person who is making opportunities, reaching out and working tirelessly:

“Alongside forging her own sound, Nia Archives has made her own way in the industry. “I was working with and reaching out to producers and stuff but they weren’t getting back to me, so I thought I’d stop waiting around and just start making beats myself”, she explains. She watched YouTube tutorials and started her production journey by making boom bap, eventually adding her array of other influences to create a style of jungle that merges the hard-hitting foundations with dreamy melodies and neo-soul vocals.

Her debut EP ‘Headz Gone West’ dropped in April this year, with the blend of upbeat drum patterns and signature sombre lyrics winning her many admirers among fans and industry peers. Lead single ‘Sober Feels’ caught fire, racking up more than two million streams to date, and soon she was working alongside jungle great Congo Natty, aka Rebel MC, with a remix of Lava La Rue’s ‘Magpie’. Nia has also been mentored by DJ Flight as part of the EQ50 mentorship programme, worked with the likes of Redlight, IZCO, Jakwob and V Recordings, and played DJ sets at events and festivals such as Alchemy, Manchester International Festival and City Splash.

She’s moved away from the “depressing” tracks she was making when she started out that had “quite deep [lyrics], but on slow beats”, deciding to “double time it and go from boom bap tempo to jungle tempo”. This created a whole new sound which has now become her staple. “It’s like emotional music, but also you're raving, you're dancing, because it's so fast and high tempo”, she describes.

“Making beats is fun, it’s like a video game to me,” Nia says of her anything goes approach. “I draw inspiration from a lot of the original jungle producers like Roni Size, Reprazent, Remarc and Lemon D,” and that can be heard across the ‘Headz Gone West’ EP. All of the tracks have the signature choppy drum patterns synonymous with the 1990s, a musical feature Nia is impressed by because “[it’s cool] that they were able to make sonic masterpieces on such rudimental hardware.”

A new EP titled ‘Forbidden Feelingz’ is set to arrive in February, which she describes as a representation of her life in its current state. The forthcoming record will be “different to the last one”, with more of an emphasis on the production than the lyrics. Her growth as a producer is audible on recent singles ‘Forbidden Feelingz’ and ‘18 and Over’, which retain hooks and singing, but subtly fuse the rap and soul-influenced flows into the melodies rather than have them take centre stage. “I think my last project was a lot more songs, and this one's a lot more like beats,” she says.

Nia Archives is keen to make her mark as a young Black woman in the jungle scene, which has been gentrified and often erases the pioneers who led the genre into existence, and set an example in the industry. “I'm trying to push more Black women producers into light and hope to see more of them,” she says.

Ultimately, Nia wants to be remembered. “Not in an ego way, but when I listen to some of my tracks, I just feel like these will be classics in around 10 years. They’ll make people feel something”, she says. This is what she means by ‘future-classic’, a term she proudly holds to herself. “I feel like my music has got lots of references to the old skool sound and the vision, but is also still very new and contemporary”.

Among the wave of artists coming through that are set to define this year in music, Nia Archives is somebody that you should be aware of. With new work coming very soon, there are a lot of eyes cast her way. A unique and hugely impressive artist, the incredible Nia Archives is…