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Allen Ling concludes heartbreak trilogy with “Remember”!

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It’s never really too late to do what you love, even if the road to that discovery is reached through an uneasy path. American-Chinese artist Allen Ling is making his formal debut as a musician, decades after his first trysts with music, which is born out of a broken heart on the path to recovery. Ling teams up with Dave Lopez, the fellow San Francisco-based world-renowned Guitarist/Producer from the popular American Alternative Hip-Hop/Rock group – Flipsyde on his musical journey.

By the age of 20, Allen who was born in California, US to immigrant parents from China, had written over 200 songs and played the roles of the lead singer and rhythm guitarist in a 13 piece band. The arts, soon after took a backseat as Allen focussed on his professional pursuits as a healthcare professional (he runs a successful Physical Therapy Business which has worked with the staff of Pixar Animation Studios and Steve Jobs to name a few), only to be brought back and reunited with his creative passions after a sudden healthcare crisis a few years ago.

The multi-faceted artist, with a special love for comic books and music, has been working on his creative projects for over a decade. Now he feels he’s ready to share it with the world starting with a trilogy of video singles that chronicle heartbreak and healing.

This very personal and autobiographical set of tracks, both witnesses and chronicles various phases of the artist’s recovery. The music video is rife with landscape visualisation and entangled love stories.

The first track of the trilogy, Straight Into The Ocean was released in June 2023. The video single, like most of Allen’s earlier projects, was never released publicly or formally and yet managed to win big at several international film festivals such as the Paris Film Festival and the Cult Critic Movie Awards among others. The video also features popular Ms. Marvel star Aramis Knight, known for his much-loved portal of the Kareem- Red Dagger alongside Ms. Marvel – Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani).

Straight Into the Ocean, is succeeded by the video single titled A Name In Your Book The second single, (which released globally in July 28th, 2023) while following the same plot as ‘Ocean’ serves as a prequel to it. The video also features Allen’s collaborator and friend Dave Lopez in a guest appearance.


The trilogy meets a fitting conclusion with an earworm aptly called Remember which is out globally on November 2nd 2023. Allen describes it as “a song worth listening to for anyone who remembers a past love.”

On how “Remember” came about, Ling explains; “I was listening to instrumental tracks with Dave Lopez at the Soundwave rehearsal studio. The one produced by Ed Claire stood out for me. I immediately started singing a melody with lyrics at the same time with the instrumental track. It had been 3 plus years since ‘the break up’, but I still had to squeeze that last little bit of tragedy out of me.”


“I believe some of the best works of art and music are born from incredible suffering. I try not to seek out heartbreak, but if you truly live and take chances it will always find you,” he further reveals.

We Speak Music

Michele Ducci teases new album with uplifting indie single ‘Woman Like You’

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Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.

‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.

The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.

The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:

Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.


About the track, Michele says, I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.

We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.

The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.

Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.

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