NS: Congratulations on the new EP release! Tell us a little bit about how this three-track project came together.

QH: These were tracks I made with the intention of debuting at the arrival. takeover at the Black Box this past November. At the time, they were some of my favorite tunes to date, and as time went on, I felt it was time to give them the finishing touches and move on to new projects.  Each track was drawn from artists who are big inspirations of mine, and I think they’re going to resonate with others who enjoy this style of bass music.

NS: Where does the name "Fika" come from? Tell us a little bit about the origins of your artist moniker.

QH: Fika is a Swedish word that takes on a lot of meanings, all revolving around one singular concept. It’s often used as a word meaning "coffee break,” but its deeper meaning has to do with "a moment to spend time with friends and family enjoying good times together." This is a huge reason why I got into the bass music scene, and it is a huge inspiration behind my music; to make heavy dancefloor music that people can get down to with their crew/friends. It is such an honor and pleasure being up on stage and seeing people dance with their friends while I'm playing my music. That’s really what inspires me to make new music as often as I can. 

NS: How long have you been producing music? What made you want to dive into learning about production? Was there a particular moment, show, etc. when it clicked for you?

QH: I started working in Ableton about eight years ago. For the first three or four years, I didn't really dive into the deeper side of sound design or use of effects. I mostly just worked with samples and loops to understand arrangement as well as music theory. I originally downloaded Ableton after my first Infrasound in 2016. Hearing all of that next-level music really inspired me and I remember very clearly thinking to myself on the second day of the festival, "I want to do THAT!" 

After dabbling with music production for a few years, I knew I was onto something. But I also knew that I would struggle to grow where I was living at the time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan since it doesn’t have much of a bass music scene. It’s awesome to see how that has started to change since I left the area though, with Summer's End Smokeout emerging over the past few years with some pretty sick lineups. 

I had always wanted to move to Colorado, and I felt that moving to Denver would be a great opportunity for me to expand my music opportunities. A few months after moving to Denver I started to get smaller bookings and began doing the Sub.mission DJ Battles at the Black Box. As I continued to play more notable shows, I became more and more inspired to make better music, specifically music that would translate in a live setting and be more DJ friendly. Also, this was during a time when I really dove into making all of my sounds from scratch using no samples or tutorials, and that's where I really started to find a more unique sound to me. 

After diving deeper into all original sound design for the bulk of my music, there was one point where I realized I was figuring the whole production thing out. I was prepping music before a set at the Black Box opening for Seppa, and I decided to take a break and mess around in Ableton for a bit. I ended up writing an entire track, and was able to get it to the point that it was sounding solid enough to play at the show the next day. To me, that was kind of mindblowing at the time to be able to play a song I had started just the night before, compared to when I started making music where it would take me months to get a song even remotely to that point. 

NS: One thing I love about your music is that it pulls in a lot of different influences and styles from some of the best in bass music. Who would you say are some of your biggest influences when you're producing? Are there other things outside of music that inspire you when you produce music?

QH: I have a ton of influences in my music, but I would say some of the big ones for me are Mickman, Tipper, Jade Cicada, Resonant Language, Detox Unit, Kursa, & Seppa. It goes without saying that those guys are some of the greatest of all time in the experimental side of things, and they are some of the people who inspired me to start making music in the first place. 

I also have to say the homies that make music—who share a similar fan base as me—inspire me heavily in the same, and a different sort of way: J.Lang, Hokey Boi, Inspectah, Backleft, Sqonk, Aznadel, Eastwood Red and many others. 

I will say music is a huge part of my life, but I also get inspired by just spending time outside. That is a bit more rare these days with how often I work on music. Other sources of inspiration are spending time with my partner, hanging out with my friends, and other forms of art like museums, visual art, etc. I will say, though, most of my inspiration is drawn from live music and hearing new sounds that I have never heard before. 

NS: You just played arguably your biggest set to date at Infrasound! Tell us a little bit about your experience playing at that iconic event.

QH: Oh man, this was definitely my most memorable experience performing music to date. Even putting all of it to words is tough, but I had an absolute blast attending from the artist side of things! The Infrasound team absolutely crushes this festival every year from top to bottom, but getting to see how well they handle things behind the scenes was the cherry on top. I got to meet so many incredible people between event staff, artists, and fans, and that was definitely one of the biggest takeaways for me personally. As far as my set goes, I was so honored that so many people showed out for my set at 3pm and really packed out the Portal Stage. 

Looking out into the crowd and seeing so many stank faces and smiles the whole hour is something that will live rent free in my head for a very long time. Also, I have to just give a shout out to the team who supplied sound for the Portal Stage at Infrasound—those Element 5s were absolutely insane, probably the best sound system I've gotten to experience, let alone play on. 

On top of playing tunes for a great crowd while the vibes were high, getting to see legendary performances from Mickman, crawdad sniper, Chez, Lumasi, Mindex, Audio Goblin, and Maxfield were also some major highlights for me. Extra shouts out to Lumasi, who played a couple of my IDs so that I could hear them front and center on that system. I have attended Infrasound many times over the years since the infamous "Infraswamp" in 2016, but this was the best one to date in my book (not even factoring in that I got to play music this year).  

NS: Anything else our readers should know about you or the Fika project in general?

I am currently working on an album, a few different EPs, and a handful of collabs, so lots of new stuff is in the works for people to listen to. Some of this really reaches in a direction that I haven't explored much yet, so I'm excited for people to hear that new side of the project. Writing music is pretty much my biggest passion in life, so people should expect to always hear something new as time goes on. Also, I just want to shout out to everyone who listens to my music and comes to my sets. It means a ton that people have enjoyed the art that I create as much as I do.