Biography
Nico (Nicholas Kristian Sykes) is the owner of UK based record label No U-Turn Records.
A visionary producer and pioneer of drum & bass driven Techstep, he helped develop ground breaking artists such as Ed Rush, Trace, Rymetyme, Fierce, Silent Witness & Break and labels including Virus, Quarantine, DSCi4, 1210, DNAudio and more.
Read full biography ↓
No U-Turn remains today a legendary outlet for cutting edge, dark, ground breaking drum & bass having helped to shape the scene into a far stretching, progressive mentality.
Trace was an early member of the tight-knit crew of producers constituting popular techstep drum’n’bass label No U-Turn. His first crack at broad exposure came through the compilation “Techsteppin’” released on Emotif in 1995. It contained a number of tracks licensed from the No U-Turn studios, and helped seed a new direction in drum’n’bass, one characterized by heavy use of electronics, cavernous beats and basslines, and the dystopian histrionics that have since become trademarks of the No U-Turn/Nu Black sound.
“The Mutant” (a remix of T.Power’s “Mutant Jazz”), was released on Emotif in 1995. It also spawned a remix of its own, “Mutant Revisited”. The remix became one of the most influential trial runs for the so-called “reece” bassline that would later become hugely popular within the genre.
Today, Trace runs DSCI4, a label that has pushed through producers like Black Sun Empire, SKC and Chris.SU as well as having legendary names like Bad Company, Kemal & Rob Data, Stakka & Skynet and Optical in its back catalogue.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.