This article may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (December 2008)

Nikolai Philippe Fraiture ^[1] (born November 13, 1978 in New York City, United States) is the bass player for the American indie rock band, The Strokes.^[2] Fraiture grew up in New York City with his Russian mother and French father and speaks fluent French. Nikolai has an older brother named Pierre and a younger sister named Elizabeth. He met future bandmate Julian Casablancas while attending the Lycée Français de New York. Fraiture received his first bass at 18, when his grandfather gave it to him as a graduation present, but Fraiture gave it to Casablancas. It was a year later that he picked it up and began to play seriously. Fraiture also attended Hunter College with Strokes' guitarist Nick Valensi.

Basses and bass playing

His bass guitar work is featured very prominently on many of The Strokes songs and is described as being the driving force that leads the melody or chorus. The most notable examples would be on their debut album Is This It where many of the songs are built around the bass guitar. Jared Followill from Kings Of Leon cites Nikolai as his main influence and that "Is This It" was one of the main reasons that he wanted to get into a band; he states, "The title track was one of the first basslines I learned ... I was just 15 at the time."

Nikolai plays a variety of basses, but is usually seen playing his Fender Jazz bass. He has also appeared playing a black and white Rickenbacker (such as the one in the "Last Nite" video), a Music Man Sterling (such as the one in the "Juicebox" video) and a Fender Precision Bass (seen as his backup bass during live performances). He uses an Ampeg SVT Classic amp for most live work and has an artist page on Ampeg's website.

Although Julian is the main song-writer for The Strokes, Nikolai has contributed to the songwriting process as well. He's co-written the song "Killing Lies" on First Impressions Of Earth and earned his first full songwriting credit on Angles where he wrote the song "You're So Right".

Solo work

Fraiture's side project, Nickel Eye, enlists the help of South (a UK band introduced to him by a friend) as his backing band. Nickel Eye recorded some demos at South Studios in Hackney, London. With some guest appearances by Nick Zinner of the New York City-based band Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Regina Spektor, The Time of the Assassins was completed a few months later in New York. The album is musically inspired by some of Nikolai's favorite artists, such as Neil Young, Frank Black, Leonard Cohen, and The Kinks. The Time of the Assassins was released on January 27, 2009 on Rykodisc.

Nickel Eye’s first performance was on October 15, 2008 at London’s Borderline venue.

Nikolai performed with dream-pop duo Beach House during their appearance on Conan on December 20, 2010.

References