Nickon Faith's "These Faces" Sound Both Mystical and Fun
Nickon Faith is an Iranian electronic artist currently based in Manchester. His sound is characterized by the use of chopped up vocals working both as melodic and percussive elements, atmospheric pads and layered cinematic sounds.
All of this gives Nickon Faith's music a mystical and almost ritualistic character. So it's not surprising that one his main influences is the French duo Deep Forest who got a Grammy in 1996 for pioneering the ethno pop approach combining traditional vocals and instruments with electronic influences. They were also fond of cinematic pads and chopping up the vocals they worked with.
We asked Nickon to tell us about this influence and share some insights from the work on his new EP Circumambient.
All of this gives Nickon Faith's music a mystical and almost ritualistic character. So it's not surprising that one his main influences is the French duo Deep Forest who got a Grammy in 1996 for pioneering the ethno pop approach combining traditional vocals and instruments with electronic influences. They were also fond of cinematic pads and chopping up the vocals they worked with.
We asked Nickon to tell us about this influence and share some insights from the work on his new EP Circumambient.
Nickon Faith
When I was a lot younger, before my early teens, I was quite exposed to a lot of electronica. My Dad was especially into artists like Deep Forest, Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, and would always play their records in the car or the house. Deep Forest in particular resonated with me as I'd never heard anything like that before, I loved the tribal chanting and chopped vocal lines, ambient mystical nature of the songs combined with a very contemporary modern energetic electronic sound/beats. I try and reflect this in my songs often as I love trying to craft in interesting vocals, mainly gated trance vocals or chopped up, and unusual instrumentation and percussion. In some of my other songs in my album there are lots of examples of this, and my sound is very ambient with ethereal soaring pads and layered atmospheres, which is also brushed off from Deep Forest's influence.
The best track on Nickon Faith's new EP is These Faces, the tune that manages to sound mystical and goofy at the same time.
And here's another tune from Nickon Faith's latest EP. He says it's the one that was the hardest to make: "I had a lot of frustration and writer's block with it, mainly to do with structuring of the track, and arrangment of melodies,. It used to be a much longer tune with lots of different ideas in, and it was hard to know which ideas to commit to and which to cut out!"
Also check out some of Nickon Faith's other jams, including his hit single Without You.