We Speak Music
Manchester indie legends The Man From Delmonte release first single in 35 years, ‘Believe Me / The International’!
After 35 years away, Manchester indie legends The Man From Delmonte are back playing live shows and releasing a brand-new album ‘Better Things’ in November, with its first taster, the fabulously hooky single ‘Believe Me’ backed by B-side ‘The International’ out now.
Between 1988 and 1991 TMFD weren’t part of any music scene. They were their own movement, sounding nothing like anyone else at the time. Selling out 3000 capacity venues, hitting the top of the Indie charts and having Inspiral Carpets and 808 State as their opening acts. Mike West, Sheila Seal, Martin Vincent and Howard Goody delivered classic pop tunes including ‘Water in My Eyes’ and ‘My Love is Like a Gift’ that were lyrically ahead of their time. Mike wrote and sang about loving men just as easily as he did about relationships with women. The audiences always loved it. The press often treated them with outright biphobia.
After a chance conversation with TV presenter Iain Lee, The Man From Delmonte are back. Their first reunion gig at Band on the Wall sold out in 12 minutes. Their following show at Manchester Academy 2 sold out in days. Over 600 copies of a double CD reissue of the band’s two albums ‘Big Noise’ & ‘Good Things in Life’ have been bought by fans desperate to get their hands on anything TMFD related.
‘Who knew that we had such AMAZING fans that had been listening to TMFD all through those years and would want us to come back and play live!” exclaims bassist Sheila Seal. ‘Someone said to me: you go into a Man From Delmonte gig in your fifties and come out in your teens’, she further adds.
Original manager Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test, The Men Who Stare at Goats) flew over from the US to introduce them at the first reunion show and comedian Chris Addison was seen dancing on stage with the band. The band’s upcoming show at the O2 Ritz on December 21st is the biggest gig of the reunion and will be a double celebration. It’s 36 years since they last played it and it will also be the launch party for the brand-new studio album, which sees The Man From Delmonte back and better than ever!
‘When the idea of putting down a new set of recordings was suggested me being me, I wasn’t sure if I Iiked it’, explains drummer Howard Goody. ‘We got together at Our Lady studio and right from the start it was a pure delight mainly due to Mike’s super recording engineering skills and in 4 1/2 days we recorded 12 songs. It all felt so natural and relaxed, playing as a band. For me it was stress and anxiety free – I couldn’t believe how good it all felt and sounded. I think we have made a really good and honest record of us playing and singing without any fanciful studio production tricks’, he further adds.
The songs on the new album are a selection of old and new material. Some tracks, including the band’s new single ‘Believe Me’, were rediscovered on forgotten demos and live cassettes that, fortunately, friends and fans of the band had kept hold of for all these years. Other songs were written long after the band broke up but somehow seem to relate to the same time and place. There are also three songs on the album that were written just a few weeks before the recording, including ‘The International’,a eulogy to frontman Mike West’s favourite rock club of all time and the B-Side to ‘Believe Me’.
If you missed The Man From Delmonte first time around, now is the time to join the cult!
New The Man From Delmonte single ‘Believe Me / The International’ is out now.
New The Man From Delmonte album ‘Better Things’ is scheduled for release on 14th November.
The Man From Delmonte to play an instore signing at Fountain Records in Manchester on 15th November.
The Man From Delmonte play the 02 Ritz, Manchester on 21st December.
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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