bunii is Back in New York City
LA indie pop prodigy returns to Racket Oct. 11
This week, 20-year-old Los Angeles guitar pop sensation Niccolo Virgilio Terre, who goes by the stage name bunii, hits the road in support of his excellent pair of new releases from this year, his second LP and Warner Records debut Virgilio and its follow-up EP WATSNEXT.
The BUNIIVERSITY Tour kicked off this past Monday, Oct. 5 at Thalia Hall in Chicago, Illinois, will be coming to the New York area this weekend, first with a show on Long Island at Amityville Music Hall and then the famed Racket club in Manhattan on Oct. 11, where he performed to a sold-out crowd in June during his first U.S. tour.
Terre says he is looking forward to playing onstage with his touring band again, allowing the distinctive combination of emo, prog, hip-hop and indie pop that encompasses the bunii sound to stretch out in the live setting.
“It’s always a learning process to get back into the groove of touring and doing these shows and whatnot. I try to do the same thing as Stevie Wonder where it’s like listening to it, it sounds like a simple melody if you’re not really paying attention to it. But then playing these songs and understanding the musicality, you start to realize, like, ‘Wait, there’s a lot more movement and a lot more going on than I thought. So it’s definitely a process of trying to teach the band members how to play the parts I recorded.”
For Terre, the multifaceted style he’s established as an artist and musician stems from his upbringing in the Los Angeles area, where he was absorbing the sounds of Brainfeeder and Stones Throw as much as he was taking in the likes of Paramore, My Chemical Romance and rock music from Japan (J-rock).
“Growing up in LA has definitely exposed me to so many different artists and scenes that I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise,” he explains. Whether that be consciously or subconsciously, it really has affected what my music taste is like and how I express myself through music. I’m starting to collect records, because I can afford to now, but before I was just scouring YouTube trying to find anything.”
One of his all-time favorite bands, he says, is Weezer, a group whose sound can definitely be heard throughout the music on both Virgillio and WATSNEXT.
“I love Weezer,” he proclaims. “My sister and I are like … well, she’s definitely a bigger Weezer head than I am, but still pull a lot of inspiration from them, just like in the way that they don’t take themselves too seriously. That’s why their music is so great. They’re definitely legends in their own right.”
Nicco also finds inspiration in jazz, citing the likes of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and fellow guitarist Wes Montgomery as his favorites.
“It’s just like the thumb style of the guitar, the way it just sounds so warm and round almost,” he says of Montgomery’s playing style. “It feels like a hug. It sounds so nice.”
Guitars play a major role in the music of bunii, possessing the kind of unorthodox chops that would give the cat from Angine de Poitrine a serious run for his microtonal money combined with a pop sensibility that shifts from The Platters (check his update of “The Great Pretender” on Virgilio) to Jon Brion (WATSNEXT’s “The Anomaly on Rodayo”) to Dinosaur Jr. (“MAYARI”) with the effortless dexterity of someone twice his age.
“I’ve been waiting for this question,” Nicco laughs when I ask him about what kind of guitar he uses. “I have a ’72 Thinline Telly. It’s the kind without any paint on it so it has a natural wood look. That’s my baby. I bring it everywhere. I also have a blue burst Gibson 335 and a Gibson Hummingbird for an acoustic. I also bring a Strat with me on the road. I got a white Strat a while ago because I love Jimi Hendrix. On the latest EP, I was trying to use all of my guitars on every song. Like, for my song ‘Harana,’ it’s every single guitar. I was trying to get as unique of a sound as possible.”
Indeed, as a craftsman, Terre certainly has come a long way from where he was just six years ago when he was barely out of middle school and posting his Metro Boomin-inspired hip-hop beats online like a pro.
“I began the project of bunii when I was like 14, 15, so it was pretty much the only way I knew how to do it was through social media,” he explains. “I was like my own one-man band literally. I was recording all my own videos, editing them myself. Every aspect of every piece of media I put out was fully done by me.”
And it was by publishing his self-made videos on TikTok and Instagram that he began to learn how to capture the audience’s attention enough to amass a following of over 100,000 listeners as a bedroom artist. The key, he says, is to grab their attention immediately.
“I think the way that it’s progressing is almost kind of scary,” he admits in regards to reaching audiences. “Just the fact that if you wanna have any chance of building a fanbase or getting anybody’s attention, you have to engage them in the first three seconds of whatever video you’re making. Otherwise they’re just gonna scroll, because everybody’s attention span is so fried.”
Lucky for Terre, bunii has fully captured the attention of today’s youth, like my own 13-year-old son Ben, who discovered him the old school way — word of mouth from a fellow eighth grade pal who found him online and played him Virgillio, which I bought for him on cassette. It’s an organic sequence of events that extends beyond the algorithm, which I firmly believe is helping young Mr. Terre enjoy this rocket ride to stardom the natural way.
“I believe my music definitely speaks to people around my age and even a bit younger,” he said. “People like your son. And I think it’s really an honor to be seen as someone who can be somewhat of a voice for those kinds of people and to have that many people relate to the music I’m putting out, which really started from me wanting to express myself. It’s really a beautiful thing.”
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