I've written about him before in one of my first articles, called 17 Musicians You Need To Hear ASAP, and now he has released an EP that I am so excited to write and tell everyone about!
On his new EP, "Space Chords", Nicco has 4 songs, titled "Astronauts," "Second," "Satellite," and "Macintosh." He has spent months working on them, two of which he worked on while at school (Penn State!), and the other two he made while he was living abroad in Milan this past spring. His original plan wasn't to make an EP, since the first two songs, "Astronauts" and "Second," are space themed. But when he created "Satellite" and "Macintosh" while in Italy, he came up with the idea to make them into an extended play, and release "Space Chords" this spring!
"Originally they were gonna be the opening tracks to another album, but that felt weird because they were so different than anything I had. Then I planned to release just the two songs together, which felt weird, so I decided I needed to add more songs. Then from there the next two songs I made were the next ones on the project, "Satellite" and "Macintosh.""
Every musician gets their inspiration from somewhere, whether it was someone who helped them discover their sound or a musician they aspire to be like in their career. For Nicco, he gets his inspiration lately from "experimental artists from different genres like Tame Impala, Jpegmafia, and Flume" where he listens to find inspiration that he could use in his own music. One of his examples of something he's found in other music to utilize in his own work is "The Incredible True Story" by Logic, where Nicco says he took a lot of inspiration from since it was also space-themed. When telling me about this, he wrote that when he listened to that album recently, he found that he unintentionally used the same sample in his song "Astronauts" that Logic uses in his track "Upgrade!"
One question I always ask any singers, songwriters, or artists I meet or write about is how they'd describe themselves as a musician. Being only 20 years old, it's totally understandable that Nicco hasn't quite found his sound yet. He's still trying to find it, and the process of doing so, and of writing music comes with a lot of trashing music and starting over.
"I actually had both a completely finished album and EP that I chose to scrap because I didn't think they were the sound that I wanted to keep making, even though I thought they were good. But for the stuff I have out right now, "Space Chords" is completely different from the album I put out last year, "Pathway," and it's going to be different than the next album/EP I'm working on at the moment."
Some musicians make their music into their full-time job, but for Nicco, making music is more of a hobby. He says, "I'm not trying to do music as a career or be famous. I do it because I think it's fun and it's how I like to spend my free time when I'm not in school or working. I've been making music for like over 2 years before I even released anything, and the only reason I started releasing things was because my friend, Amir Mackey (Alpha Moses), gave me confidence and showed me how to do everything I didn't know how to do myself. So I do this because it's fun for me and I want to keep doing it until it isn't fun."
Many artists have a song they feel is their best work, their pride and joy. I asked Nicco which of his songs is his favorite, and his response was different than any I'd gotten before because his favorite songs are ones he hasn't released yet, which means we all have to wait for his next release to hear them! One song he is proud of is his remix for the Medasin redo of Will He by Joji, especially since it was the first remix he ever felt confident enough to put out.
If you haven't clicked the links inserted into this article, please click here to get to Nicco's Soundcloud page, where you can listen to all of his amazing songs and remixes and eagerly await the new songs to come!
