The Middle-Eastern guitar melody in Blackpink’s How You Like That. The whistle at the very beginning of S-Class by Stray Kids. The sax melodies in Money and Lalisa by Lisa. The crowd chants at the beginning of Seventeen’s Super. Each of these sounds, instantly familiar to fans of K-pop, came not from the Korean genre’s raft of super-producers but from one man, thousands of miles away.
Very few people associate Niles Hollowell-Dhar with K-pop. Currently working under the mononym Kshmr, he first made a name for himself in the mainstream pop world for co-producing the 2010 electro-house banger Like a G6. For the last decade, he has performed as a DJ at festivals including Coachella, Ultra, Sunburn, and Tomorrowland. “I’ve actually never been interviewed about my samples being used in K-pop,” he says warmly, speaking via video call from Croatia, where he is on the lineup to play at the Noa Beach Club. “Let’s do this.”
