15 Minutes

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Nick Wallhauser, 35

Member of the Durham-based beat-music collective and label Raund Haus

BY BRIAN HOWE bhowe@indyweek.com

So, Raund Haus dropped a record last week. Pixl Prymd, who was part of our Seemingly Singles series, he’s brothers with J0eru, who we released in 2018. They’re twins from Fredericksburg, Virginia. And they’re very good friends with b0nds, who we also released in Seemingly Singles. They do what could be thrown into lo-fi hip-hop, but Pixl Pyramid, what makes him different is that he plays synths through VSTs or hardware, and it is a very lo-fi vibe, but he doesn’t really use samples.

When Raund Haus reaches outside of North Carolina, how do you decide who to release? Reaching out to people like that, what we get to do is host them here, which [we did last week] with Pixl Prymd at The Mothership. This goes all the way to people like Dibia$e—everyone who’s come here has left so pumped about their experience. I think it says a lot for the artists here and the community that comes to support those things. What else is coming up for Raund Haus? Our schedule’s pretty stacked. Ronnie Flash went from making very lo-fi homework beats—like, if you found a “study beats” playlist, his old music would be in there—but he totally flipped it, and he’s making really good up-tempo dance music. That comes out March 20. To reach further than Virginia, in May, we’re releasing a compilation from a crew in Tokyo. It’s boom-bap, very slappy, dusty sample-type stuff. I’m super pumped for that because of my personal connection. [Wallhauser lived in Japan for five years.]

This hasn’t been announced yet, but in March, we’re going to work with [house music party] The Floor. We’ve worked with Party Illegal, with Art of Cool, with Moogfest, but we’ve never worked with The Floor. Our genre keeps spreading. Like Ronnie Flash, a lot of people are going that direction. I think it’s awesome. W