To start off, tell us a bit about yourself and your music. Who inspired you to start recording? A lot of different people inspired me to get into music. My parents by taking me to music class at an early age, and my moms especially for always playing records. Artists like Prince and The Beatles as well as groups like A Tribe Called Quest inspired me directly as well. And definitely my man J Dilla, RIP. How did you and Phonte Coleman of Little Brother meet and how did The Foreign Exchange come about? We first met on the Okayplayer message boards and discovered that we had similar interests when it comes to music. He was just starting out with Little Brother at the time, and I was just starting to put some tracks online to get some feedback. He loved them, and so we decided to give it a shot and work together. They recorded the vocals to Light It Up and Nic's Groove pretty much the next week, and the rest is history... When will the new Foreign Exchange album, Leave It All Behind, be released? We are not sure yet, but more than likely the album will be released in the summer of 2008. Do you have any other new projects coming up in the New Year that you can tell us about? The first full length album that my label Nicolay Music Recordings will be dropping is the TIME:LINE album that I recorded with Kay of The Foundation. It's a concept album about the many different angles of ‘time’, and features guests such as Oh No, Stokley from Mint Condition, Chip Fu, Strange Fruit Project and many others. That is going to be out in February.
My name is Nicolay and I am a producer/musician originally from The Netherlands, Europe and currently living and working in North Carolina. I play keyboards/synthesizers, guitars, bass and drums. Most people know me as one half of The Foreign Exchange and outside of that and my own albums I have produced music with and for Little Brother, Median, Supastition, Kay of The Foundation, Darien Brockington, Oh No, Yahzarah, Sy Smith, Strange Fruit Project, Stokley Williams of Mint Condition, Chip Fu, EMC, Zion I, Roy Ayers, Bob James, Jaguar Wright and many many more.
