In every new voice we hear an echo of the past. This is the artist’s way: stealing what you love and loving what you steal. And then – this is what defines him or her as a true artist - not repeating it, but dragging it into your own world. Making it sing differently. Your way. Like it has never been sung before Listening to Nikolai’s first album, in the opening song we seem to be in Americana country, but it’s a smoking gun with a twist. The next song is a surf trip to nowhere land. Listen to ‘Loverman’, background vocals coming in when you least expect it. Haunting. A whisper that sounds familiar, but far from being family, in fact it’s a threat. Nikolai is not just a singer songwriter, in my opinion he’s a composer, with lyrics on the side. A true musician, looking for the listener’s sweet spot, seducing and then sometimes stepping aside as if to say: this may not be what you expected, but this is it, take it or leave it. And that is what we gladly do. In the French ‘Il ne pleut pas’ with it’s sad undertone. In the spooky ‘Hades’, and the strange folksy ‘Voor Die Liefde Nie’. His music is potent, yet vulnerable. Sometimes it sounds as if it could almost fall apart. Listen to the chorus with its faltering echo, the almost pastoral ‘Acquoy’. Eclectic songs for a broken world, that’s what springs to mind listening to this album. And yes, they’re all here: Dylan, Reed, Waits, somewhere in the wings, but it couldn’t be anyone else but Nikolai, a new voice, a one-man-band. Just listen. Benjamin Burg