Connect with us

We Speak Music

Baytrees release ‘Sunshine’ video

Published

on

Brixton-hailing four-piece ‘Baytrees’ have been crafting their unique blend of hip hop beats, funk rock riffs and catchy pop hooks since 2018. New single ‘Sunshine’ is a soulful, life-affirming story inspired by the sun and is a song about summer, as everything is just better when the sun is out.

Lead singer/songwriter Mensah Hart explains, “I wrote sunshine on a gloomy, rainy day. I had had enough of cold weather and wanted to be back home in Jamaica or in the sunshine of Barcelona or Ibiza – both second homes to me and places I love to visit. I wanted to create something that could automatically transport myself and the listeners somewhere else. We wanted to create an instant party. What is life if not one long ass party?”

Baytrees is made up of brothers Mensah (songwriter, producer, lead singer, keyboard, guitarist, and producer) and Kwame Hart (Bass Guitar), who are joined by friends Marcus Harris (drums and vocals) and Cujoe Ryan (guitarist and keys). Collectively, the members of the band have supported acts including The Sex Pistols, grime sensation Kano, and rock royalty The Rolling Stones. As songwriters, Baytrees have worked with legendary Italian artist Gianna Nannini on her album ‘La Differenza’ which reached number 2 in the Italian charts.

Mensah further reveals more about new single ‘Sunshine’, “Musically, the guitars and synth are inspired by Earth Wind and Fire, Micheal Jackson Talking Heads, Gap Band, J Hus, Metronomy, and Daft Punk. I like to listen to music new and old when I’m in the creative process as it always sets me up to create something fresh. Lyrically, the song is about having a positive outlook on life and living to the fullest. It’s also about gratitude to really feel grateful for each day of life. Tomorrow is not promised so let’s love the process.”

Continue Reading
Advertisement

We Speak Music

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

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Trending