We Speak Music
Euphoric and warm glitchy Michael Hamilton single ‘Glimmer’
Michael Hamilton is a composer who is just as capable of tugging on your heart strings as bursting your ear drums. In his work you’ll hear everything from symphony orchestras, to retro synthesizers, to the 8-string guitars that linger from his days as a death metal guitarist. In addition to his work as a solo artist, Michael is also known for his work on video game and film soundtracks and, alongside collaborator, Ross Cairns, is also a prolific techno producer whose tracks have been released by record labels and heard on dancefloors from around the globe.
When he’s not composing, Michael works as a session musician, performing with various internationally renowned artists, and can be found onstage as the bassist of Progressive Music Award winning post-rock band, Midas Fall.
A Language Forever is a collection of electronic, beats-driven tracks inspired by UK Bass and Electronica producers such as Burial, Jamie XX, Asa and fellow Monotreme labelmate, Sorrow. As with each of his releases, the aim was to break new ground while borrowing from and building upon his previous work.
A Language Forever takes many of the characteristics of his soundtrack work, as well as his work with Midas Fall, and relocates it to more dancey, experimental realms where Dubstep, Glitch and IDM collide. These compositions marry fractured breakbeat samples with emotive, cinematic chord progressions; crunchy drum machine loops with intimate piano melodies; deep, gritty reese basses with mournful string passages – all atop a textured backdrop of vinyl crackle, foley recordings and pitch-shifted vocals. It’s the kind of album that can provide an apt soundtrack to both the climax of a Saturday night, and the chilled out ambience of a Sunday morning.
Remixes are provided by friends and fellow Glasgow-based producers farfromnorth, Ross Somerville, and Innblásin, as well as frequent collaborator and the album’s mixing/mastering engineer, Ross Cairns.
In keeping with his long-standing DIY ethic, like each of Michael’s previous releases, A Language Forever was written and recorded in his living room in Glasgow, Scotland, with Michael playing/programming every instrument himself.
Glimmer, the 3rd single from, A Language Forever, swoops and soars on gossamer wings of violin and synths, underpinned by airy beats. Says Michael, “I call this the ‘Disney Finale’.. The album can be quite intense and dark at points, but I wanted to close it with a moment of euphoria and warmth. I wanted to leave listeners feeling positive at the end of their journey, and this is the album’s lightest, most whimsical point: a glimmer of light at the end of the album’s proverbial, kaleidoscopic tunnel of emotions.”
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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