We Speak Music

LLOREN drops live session from KONK studios

Published

1 year ago

December 6, 2024

Don Reed

After years of making cinematic music for film & TV, British pop singer and former “The Voice” finalist LLOREN is limbering up to release her dream pop debut album “It’s Always Sunny in LA” very soon.

But first she is dropping a special version of her track ‘Beverly Hills Baby’ recorded in a live session at the legendary KONK Studios. Established in the early 1970s by The Kinks as their private studio and a few years later opened to outside acts like Bay City Rollers, Thin Lizzy, and the Bee Gees, KONK Studios has recently played host to The Arctic Monkeys, Bombay Bicycle Club and Wild Beasts.

The song is from the perspective a woman who seemingly has it all, but she’s lonely, so she seeks the love of a younger man in a desperate bid to cling onto something youthful and romantic, to feel something magical one last time, but she knows it’s not real, that a part time love, is fleeting but that’s what makes it so desperately romantic.

“I hung out at the Beverly Hills hotel once and met a fascinating woman who was staying in town to have her face done. We talked about lots of things, her daughter, her penchant for younger men and I liked her story”, explains LLOREN.

The new release is a break in LLOREN’s string of recent singles which tease her new album and feature huge stadium-pop atmospheres and 80’s style production. Like her previous 2024 releases, “Beverly Hills Baby” continues to reveal LLOREN’s love of nostalgia and the US, but strips things back to leave more space for reflection and intimacy. There’s a slight Americana ballad tinge to the track and the versatility of LLOREN’s voice becomes more of a warming comfort here than the soaring choruses of tracks like ‘The One’ and ‘California Daydream’.

The track follows airplay for LLOREN’s music from BBC Radio 2’s Angela Griffin and Radio X’s John Kennedy and press acclaim from prestigious music tastemakers The Line Of Best Fit. LLOREN’s video for her track “Like This” also won a Telly Award in the US, as well as also being nominated for a prestigious Leo Award in Canada.

Grey’s Anatomy, The L Word, 1923, Wish, The Company You Keep, Made In Chelsea, Love Island UK and Love Island USA are just some of the many sync credits LLOREN has amassed to date, which have steadily proved her rich, multi-faceted vocal and powerful contemporary inspired compositions to be a cut above the rest.

LLOREN was recently invited to join American artist Fleurie on her first European tour. During the tour, she also caught the eyes of promoters who invited her back to open for household names Johannes Oerding and Michael Patrick Kelly and an audience of 10000 people. In the UK, LLOREN is no stranger to the annual PRIDE celebrations having played both Manchester and London where she headlined the women’s stage and has entertained crowds over 10000. She has also toured with Canadian artist Mauvey with whom she collaborated with on the track ‘Pillow’, performing it at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend as well as the Isle Of Wight Festival 2023.

We Speak Music

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

Published

1 day ago

April 17, 2026

Don Reed

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 5^th 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.