Penni’s Palace

Description

Welcome to Nicolini’s wonderful world of surprise – Penni’s Palace. Here you will find zebra-chairs and matchbox countachs, colourful tv-screens and Penni the cat presiding over proceedings. You will also find Nicolini, hunched over his MPC or Casio keyboards, sweeping the EQs to make the sounds move, jamming out his songs in heavy microdoses. They are the sounds of machines and the city – Amsterdam centre to be precise – brought to life with volts of electricity.

These songs started out as a live show on the terrace of Garage Noord nightclub, and over the following months Nicolini tweaked and re-recorded them into the collection of tracks you have before you. Bristling with energy, these live jams have a loose, almost mystical feeling – you never know quite what’s around the corner. Sounds jump out of the speakers at you, from car engines to reverb crashes. Opposites face off against each other – the mechanical meets the organic, and the cold emptiness of the city contrasts with the warm timbres of tropical climes.

Nicolini is quite used to combining disparate elements, particularly as a member of the re-configured Zamrock band WITCH. As pioneers of some of the heaviest space fuzz back in the ‘70s, WITCH combined garage-psych guitars with Zambian dialects and culture to create a wildly unique sound. Nicolini joined the band during their resurgence over the last few years, as they toured far-flung corners of the world. It’s an experience that undoubtedly helped Nicolini hone one skill set in particular – combining unexpected sounds together in unusual ways – and it’s on full display across these nine tracks.

South of North – 2021