We Speak Music

mau from nowhere Displays the Weight of the World and Pulse of the Street in ‘Pressure’ with hihi

Published

8 months ago

August 18, 2025

From the jump, Pressure feels less like an album and more like a collision—mau from nowhere and hihi crash their worlds together in a way that sparks entirely new forms. Born out of London’s chaos, the record thrives on paradox: raw but refined, abrasive yet tender, fractured but whole. The opening tracks, “here we are again” and “what’s all this then,” announce themselves with a rush of static and syncopation, throwing the listener into a whirlwind of distorted jazz samples, serrated beats, and voices half-submerged in noise. It’s not comfort music—it’s confrontation, but one with undeniable groove.

What makes Pressure hit harder than a typical debut is its refusal to let the energy sit in one place. The duo pivot with surgical precision, pulling into hushed spaces on “peace:war” and “let it pass,” where the production feels like it’s breathing alongside the vocals. These moments of reprieve make the explosive ones sharper, like cracks of lightning across a night sky. “portals” and “e6” glide toward dream territory, balancing romantic warmth with a kind of aching unreality, as if the city itself were dissolving into mist. The way the record expands its emotional palette feels like walking through London on foot—every corner holding a new frequency, a new mood, a new confrontation with self.

Then comes “a_m_h,” a centerpiece that bursts with life. Featuring a chorus of Nairobi voices, it spins chaos into euphoria, a reminder that dislocation can create its own kind of communion. By contrast, “Green hill zone” digs deep into mortality, one of mau’s most piercing vocal deliveries floating above sparse, haunting production. It’s this duality—joy pressed against sorrow, local voices blending into global echoes—that makes Pressure feel urgent. This isn’t just experimentation for experimentation’s sake; it’s a soundtrack to survival in a fractured world.B

y the time the final stretch arrives—“miss you,” “silly,” and the hazier, more experimental “plastic mouth” and “back into the blur”—the album feels less like a project and more like a lived experience. Mau and hihi don’t just bend genres; they dissolve them, leaving behind a blueprint for what hip-hop can become when pushed past its edges. Pressure is an odyssey of contradictions, stitched together with intention and defiance. It demands you sit with discomfort, but it rewards you with clarity, a reminder that sometimes the only way through the chaos is to turn it into sound.

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.