Pierrot is a stock male character in French pantomime and Italian commedia dell’arte, a figure with a sad white-painted face, a loose white costume, and a pointed hat. This tradition served as an inspiration for the dark-Italo brainchild of Houston’s Nickolas Simone, Arcangelo il Demoni, lets fly an intriguing, ghostly new single, “Pierrot”, featuring Cupid Come.
The single serves a greater purpose for Demoni’s upcoming album The Seventh Seal Has Been Broken, a tribute to Paige Anderson, frontwoman of Diotima, who passed away tragically in October, 2020. Nickolas frequently mentions her, out of pure love and tribute for the woman who helped start his musical journey.
“We used to all listen to italo disco bands like Kano, Valerie Dore, Baltimora. etc and just laugh with the sheer absurdity – yet vibe with the high-class artistic aesthetic of the genre, some of the best times I remember with Paige.”
Arcangelo il Demoni is a fluid project where Nickolas creates instrumentals based on his childhood nostalgia of italo-disco deep cuts which then are enhanced by his collaborators’ diverse sounds. One such fusion comes from shoegaze band Cupid Come (Mario Zizumbo & Frances Blackheart) from Salt Lake City, Utah. Simone created a fusion of three completely separate genres, which impacted the shaping of his life.
The album will have a sci-fi/cyberpunk epic tied in about a future psychic war, and Age of Enlightenment, Simone has been heavily influenced by niche pop culture, in the form of anime like Lupin III, Akira, Angel’s Egg, Post-Apocalyptic JRPGs like Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, etc. and Ralph Bakshi films and B-movies like Wizards and Cool World.
Listen to “Pierrot” below:
Pre-order the album here.
