Nicolás Blanco

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Nicolás Blanco (also known as Nico, or Nicolito) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 14, 1981. He is thought to be one of the most gifted, talented contemporary musicians to emerge from outside the english-speaking world. However, he is yet to achieve public success. He started to develop a passion for music at the age of 11, when his uncle (a reputable folk guitarist) tought him a few basic chords on the guitar. A year later, his father bought him an acoustic guitar for his 12th birthday, which he learnt to play by playing along to Ramones songs. In 1997, he formed Noxa along with guitarist Javier Cortéz and drummer Marcos Datti. Nico performed with this band as the bassist and lead singer. Noxa's style was shaped by the influence of nu-metal bands such as Korn and Deftones, which he later came to strongly despise. In 2001, Nico and former Noxa's guitarist Javier Cortéz reunited to form Abril. They were later joined by Diego Volpe on the keyboards, Federico Landaburu on the drums (replaced in 2002 with Hernán Rosa)and Miguel López on rhythm guitar. During a radio interview in 2002, Nico refused to define the style of the band by stating that "that is a question that I could never answer, and I am happy not being able to answer it...people are obsessed with tags, but I am not. From the very beginning I made it clear that we wouldn't accept any kinds of musical stereotypes because we couldn't think of ourselves as an indie band, or a pop band, or whatever you might call us. When it comes to songwriting, I just want to be as open-minded as possible. You can sit down with your guitar and say ok, I'm gonna write a hard rock song or a ballad or whatever. It's an easy mistake to make, and I say it's a mistake because you are limiting your creativity." Later in the interview he criticised British rock band Muse saying that "they do too much of a job on their songs" and accusing them of being "a bunch of Radiohead copycats". Abril split up in 2004 for unknown reasons, remaining a cult band in Argentina to this day. Nico married British student Naomi Dalton on April 5th 2006 and is currently based in London, United Kingdom, where he is working on Aimless-Lee, his new dark techno solo project. He has recently announced that his new album will be released in September 2006 and that most of the new lyrics have been written in English.