Songs to dream. If you are ready to let your imagination go, Credendoti montagna by Nicolas Zullo is the right record for you, out today March 18th, 2022 on CD and digitally via Ibexhouse with the artistic supervision of Alessandro Fiori, led by the title track and the brand new single Aiutami, to be enjoyed in the morning in semi-sleep, or with your head in the clouds.
The ten songs of Credendoti montagna were composed by Zullo, selected from many ideas born between the end of 2019 and 2020 and then collected into a record. The common thread that holds them together is the will to investigate the dream dimension of the human being and its inestimable value. Each song is conceived as a secret that seeks (and never finds fully) a pretext to be revealed. There are eyes that look like nests, hearts crushed under stones, a man who dies from the explosion of a firecracker, a mother who was once a countryside, the right of rainwater sold for a little to a feeble fire. In short, there is the typical disorientation of dreams. The lyrics, imaginative and far from the alleged objectivity of the chronicle, try to verbalize the profound truths to which we access in some mysterious way through dreams, without the presumption of being able to translate them.
Nicolas Zullo (guitar, voice and lyrics) is an Italian songwriter from Viareggio (Lucca), born in 1992, who passed from his philosophy studies to the adventure of musical production. After a few demos and various live experiences, Zullo dedicated himself to the realization of his first official solo album, following the feelings of each song with extreme naturalness. The arrangements have been elaborated in communion with the creativity of the musicians Mirko Bianchini (bass), Edoardo Dinelli (drums) and Umberto Ciccarelli (piano and keyboards). During the quarantine imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Zullo came into contact with the Italian well known musician Alessandro Fiori (synths, violins and choirs), with the help of whom he recorded Credendoti montagna during March 2021 at the Cotton Factory in Forlì-Cesena, with the technical support of Emanuele Cotone Para and the master of Stefano Amerigo Santoni (Sycamore Age).
Songwriting and sound research go hand in hand moving between folk-pop and psychedelia, melodies and weirdness, warm timbres and unconventional solutions. According to Zullo: “I don’t think there are any influences directly attributable to this record, but surely this record would not have been this record if in my life I hadn’t listened to and learned a lot from artists like Bob Dylan, Beatles, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Donovan, Fabrizio De André, Lucio Battisti. Among the contemporary artists, I appreciate Tame Impala, Timber Timbre, Mac DeMarco, Connan Mockasin and many others“.
The almost childish approach to dreams and the references to nature, recognizable from the title of the album (translatable in English as Believing you a mountain), are also recurrent in the artwork created by the illustrator, photographer, painter and graphic designer Davide Bondielli. Zullo states that “Nature has a particular charm on me. I grew up in an area that, within a few kilometers, encompasses the sea, mountains, lakes and hills and I feel very attached to it. I like the calm with which things happen in these places. The cover of the record was born from a need for simplicity and minimalism. We wanted to play with archetypal images, which – even without referring precisely to the contents of the record – were able to anticipate their intuitions” . The artwork is also a reference to bring the two characters of the brand new Aiutami‘s videoclip to life, from an idea of Zullo and Ciccarelli – responsible for shooting and editing – with Bianchini, Erika Lucchesi and Bondielli. It can be said that Credendoti montagna was written and thought for all the dreamers out there.
