We Speak Music
Anne Ryan’s Invisible Rooms Is Relatable In The Best Way
Everyone has that running commentary in their head. The one that replays conversations, questions decisions and occasionally keeps you awake at 2am wondering if you replied to a text correctly three days ago. Anne Ryan clearly knows that voice well, because her debut EP Invisible Rooms feels like a soundtrack for exactly those moments.
Rather than pretending to have everything figured out, Ryan leans into the uncertainty. The seven tracks on Invisible Rooms explore the internal spaces people tend to keep to themselves. Doubt, reflection and the slow process of making peace with your own thoughts all make an appearance, but the EP never feels heavy or overly serious.
Part of that comes down to the music itself. Ryan works within a modern alt-pop framework, layering soft electronic production with melodies that are easy to latch onto. The sound is polished without feeling artificial, and the songs move quickly enough that the record keeps a natural momentum.
“Set Me Free” is a perfect example of what Ryan does well. The track captures the frustration of feeling stuck in your own head while still delivering a hook that is immediately memorable. It is the kind of song that manages to sound thoughtful and catchy at the same time, which is not always an easy balance to pull off.
Elsewhere, the EP reveals a songwriter who knows how to keep things focused. Each track contributes something slightly different, but everything still fits together neatly by the end. Nothing feels wasted and nothing overstays its welcome.
What makes Invisible Rooms such an enjoyable listen is how relatable it is. Ryan is not presenting herself as someone with all the answers. She is simply documenting the process of working things out.
For a debut, that honesty works in her favour. Anne Ryan comes across as self-aware, thoughtful and quietly confident, which makes Invisible Rooms a very interesting first introduction.
Invisible Rooms is out now on all major platforms via Now Listen.
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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