Crystallized minimal, not a roller coaster! | Nik Rudari - DJ

Story and Photography by Dardan Zhegrova 

Nik Rudari travels with his studio “Caravan”, and  creates music. A very alternative way of creating while traveling.

Raised in Germany but originally from Kosovo, Rudari is a member of the band Llomo. Initially he experimented with different genres, improvising instruments with music programs. But due to his desire that people not only dance to his music he introduced something new with the sounds, a kind of meditation inspired by the “chaos” that clarified the euphoria of moments.

Directly or indirectly, the influence of traveling through streets, interacting with people of different cultures, the special living environments that he encounters in rural areas, nature, and the architecture of towns, makes his music more alive to the listener, more familiar in the context of perceiving real life, colors, the movement of objects, and the basic sounds that they hear every day.

Nik and Dren Shehu, a friend and a musician, began playing their experimental music in 2006 with instruments that they improvised themselves, mixed with effects from computer programs vst and abletone. Llomo produced experimental IDM (breacore), or said otherwise individual music open to a variety of genres. Due to the peculiarity of this music, they had a lot of room for experimentation. With their expansion, Llomo became increasingly identified with minimal electronic music, realistic, open for meditation – creating the illusion of slowing down of time.

During the four years of Llomo’s existence they performed in various bars in Prishtina, such as Gegë, Crem de la Crème, Zero, Hard Rockers Club etc., and also live on radio UrbanFm.

They held more frequent performances, more informal and more free, in garages or private homes, but for a smaller audience.

They often improvised in the “studio on wheels,” i.e. parties they organized on long trips. Those were more interesting and involved a small group of people, a long road, LPs with music, and spontaneous sounds.

There is no specific time when an individual begins his road on acertain passion, but there is an age when he starts developing that passion as a part of his identity.

For Nik that moment was when he was 13 years old and had started playing the guitar, but out of curiosity for a bigger variety of sounds, he began trying other instruments too.

It was the year 1998, the war in Kosovo had begun, and Nik and his family, as many other Albanians, were expelled from their homes and sent to Germany.

Now in a new city he continued to develop his creativity by practicing and joining different instruments together, to achieve what he thought could not be achieved with only one instrument.

He joined the scene of underground parties, met various artists and became a member of a German punk-rock band, Happy Jack. Though newly formed, the band held concerts in halls where famous German artists were performing.

Nick was the drummer, and as a fan of rock ’n’ roll, punk, and metal, he was now formed as a musician and more or less had tasted the current to which he wanted to contribute.

After 8 years in Germanyhe decided to return to Kosovo in 2005 to look for opportunities in music to contribute what he had built as an artist.

“When I got to Kosovo, it was a ‘break-down’ for me, I was used to the spirit of concerts and people there, and here everything seemed very chaotic, I still haven’t managed to adapt,” states Rudari.

Despite the dissatisfaction coming back to Kosovo also provided a wider horizon for a more ambiguous kind of creativity, requiring diffraction and clarity, because only in that way could its importance be understood. This is why Rudari began introducing electronic music in his tracks, he took minimal beats, and “crystallized” them (as he puts it), and put them in the music he was making at that time.

Currently he is working with Adnan Krusha (a DJ from London) and Dren Shehu (member of Llomo), on the formation of an indie rock ‘n’ roll band – TOP TV.

Nik’s music loses the importance of the environment where it is listened to, whether it’s walking down a street, in a car, in a room, on a mountain, in a club, or anywhere else. It reinforces the importance of perception, it merges the contrast and difference between objects, gives objects a taste, allows communication between things that breathe and those that don’t, and the listener becomes one with time and space.