We Speak Music
M’ADAM Drops New Album ‘Before We Die’
Adam O’Donovan, under his moniker M’ADAM, delivers a hauntingly beautiful meditation on loss and memory with his second album Before We Die. Echoing the lyrical intimacy of Sufjan Stevens and Phoebe Bridgers, while rooting his sound firmly in an Irish sensibility, M’ADAM crafts songs that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant. From its opening notes, the record establishes itself as a journey through grief, remembrance, and the fragile beauty of life itself.
The album’s strength lies in its rich collaborative spirit. With contributions from SAL, Sarah Hickey, Dylan Howe, and more, each track feels layered with voices and textures that expand O’Donovan’s vision. Áine Delaney’s string arrangements add an aching orchestral depth, while the late poet Eoin Murray’s words drift in like spectral echoes, reinforcing the album’s concept of overlapping worlds. Produced by Kealan Kenny, the soundscape moves fluidly between indie-folk, folk rock, and chamber pop, never losing its emotional clarity.
The title Before We Die speaks to urgency and reflection, and the songs embody that duality—moments of quiet intimacy swell into sweeping, cathartic passages, reminding us that grief and hope often coexist. With this record, M’ADAM doesn’t just chronicle loss; he creates a space to sit with it, to find beauty within it, and to carry forward what remains. It’s a work of both vulnerability and vision, marking O’Donovan as one of Ireland’s most compelling contemporary songwriters.
On the release, M’ADAM shares, “This album grew out of grief but also out of love. It helped me understand how much the people we’ve lost still shape the lives we lead, how entangled they are with us, even in absence.”
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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