Nick Monaco
Origin: United States
Nick Monaco only has one secret — and it’s that Nick Monaco is his real name. He’s never afraid to be exposed.
He is a fluid, eclectic spirit, a way of being in the world. He’s the guy that you swear that you know from somewhere. But it’s not him that you recognize. It’s the familiar, essential, pulse of his art and aura.
With his first two albums, Mating Call and Half Naked, Nick Monaco established himself as an irresistibly magnetic, relentlessly creative, and genre-defying artist in dance music. Now, with the creation of his new label, Unisex Records, and his forthcoming LP Heroin Disco, he announces himself again as one of the most original and insightful artists working in the genre. Always creating music toward the values of inclusivity, radical self-expression, the strange and uncanny, Monaco stands as a powerful and positive force against the homogeneity of mainstream dance music, asking everyone to wave their freak flags high along with him.
On Mating Call, Monaco created a series of personas to explore various facets of his personality. On his last album, Half Naked, he stripped these characters away, writing his most personal music yet. But with 2018’s Heroin Disco, Monaco turns his attention outward: he explores the excesses and emptiness of contemporary America, the relationship between pleasure and self-destruction — inviting the listener at each moment to both enjoy pleasure, and wonder what is at stake in that enjoyment. The album’s ease, psychedelia, and mellifluousness serve not to hide the darker thematic elements, but to frame them—we surreptitiously lose ourselves in the pleasurable wash of sound, only to jolt back to reality with Monaco’s sharp, dystopian lyricism.
Through his music, enthralling performances, collaborations with artists of all media, impeccable musical curation, and worldwide touring, Nick Monaco has created more than just a holistic sensory experience — he’s created a community, a network of lovers.
