Premiere: NKC ‘Beams’

Even The Strong founder NKC will release a new EP, 'Beams', via Tzusing’s Sea Cucumber label this month. 

Marking the second release on the Malaysian-Chinese DJ and producer’s recently launched imprint, Bristol’s NKC comes through with four cuts of typically percussive and propulsive club cuts, inspired in part by ‘90s and early ‘00s trip-hop and alt rock club edits. 

Speaking about the early influences for the release, NKC says: “In summer 2019, [producer and DJ] MM and I went to Ireland to DJ in Dublin and Cork. On Saturday, at our friends’ club night CXNT, we decided to split warm up duties. MM went on first and dropped some of his own chuggy edits of late ‘90s, early ‘00s trip hop and alt-rock tracks – a slow storm of pick-slides, metal cranks and spiralling basslines. We then went b2b for a properly chaotic life-highlight set.

“When I got back to the UK the following week, fully inspired by those tracks and the whole weekend, I started trying out double pedal kick drums, low slung and processed guitars, and booming 808s, welding them together with my usual heavy perc focus. Those ideas became the ‘Beams’ EP, which was, for me, an outlet for a cycle of anxieties, mind-loops and self-destructive impulses that predated the global Panasonic.”

A specialist in the “hard drum” sound, NKC delivers some of his strongest, and hardest, work to date on ‘Beams’, while pushing himself in new creative directions with gusts of manipulated FX and instrumentation. You can hear the ferocious title track, a collaboration with MM, below. MM's 'Figure' EP under his Async Figure alias launched Sea Cucumber back in June. 

‘Beams’ will be released on 12th August. You’ll be able to buy it through Sea Cucumber’s Bandcamp.