NICE&AO
ILL.SUGI
About NICE&AO
NICE&AO is a collaboration between Seattle-based hip-hop producers Nice Nate and DJAO. Their debut collaborative album, IT'S YOUR CLOSE PERSONAL FRIENDS NICE&AO LIVE IN THE STUDIO, was released on July 23, 2013, via Paxico Records. Nice (25, real name Nate Pringle) and AO (26, real name Alex Osuch) began collaborating in the summer of 2011. Nice grew up in Spokane in a "super-conservative Christian" household and got turned on to hip-hop via positivity-pushing artists like Jurassic 5 and Blackalicious. AO's parents rarely listened to music when he was growing up, but he had his hiphop epiphany with the Beastie Boys' underrated 1998 classic Hello Nasty. Then, while studying English literature at University College of London, AO had his sonic horizons expanded, including immersion in J Dilla's oeuvre. Nice and AO share a devotional respect of Dilla, and it clearly resonates in their solo output and collaborations. "Dilla was the bridge for everything I'm into now," AO says. "I think Donuts is one of the best pieces of music in all of humanity, starting with Gregorian chants. [Donuts] is clearly the blueprint for the stuff we're doing here." Nice&AO champion the chopped-and-screwed approach to production that DJ Screw pioneered in the '90s. "It's cool to find the different sounds within a finished song that the people making it maybe didn't pick up," Nice says. "But you pick it up with your ear for the kind of music that you want to make." AO observes, "You're breaking down a song that has structure and conventional elements to just the tones and the harmonies and the base sonic elements and enjoying them on their own. It's warm and meditative. When you slow a beautiful song down, you pay even closer attention to everything. It's just an easy way to make something sound fuckin' zoned out, to make something sound really thick and meaty." Though their music often moves at a sluggish pace, Nice&AO's work rate does not. Since 2011, Nice has uploaded three albums to Bandcamp, and AO has released tracks on Car Crash Set and Dropping Gems and just issued a collection called Screwmixes for Hush Hush, wherein he reinterprets tracks by Grimes, Janet Jackson, Mount Kimbie, and others. AO's first solo album proper is slated for a summer 2013 release on Dropping Gems. Both gentlemen would eventually like to work with MCs, particularly with Rik Rude and young local rapper J'Von.
Taken from Last.fm
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