We Speak Music
Michael Blackwell Reveals Energetic New Single ‘Down On Your Luck’
London-based singer-songwriter Michael Blackwell will release his forthcoming energetic new single ‘Down On Your Luck’..
The foundation of ‘Down On Your Luck’ is his love of music and unmatched talent for fusing captivating instruments with profound lyricism. The indie-rock offering infuses guitar, bass, drums, vibraphone, tambourine, and vocals. It’s an easy-listening tune in that it showcases Michael Blackwell’s soaring vocals with an exceptional earworm production.
Michaell Blackwell comments on the release, “‘Down On Your Luck’ is a song about coming to terms with the fact that, through your own creation, things haven’t turned out how you thought they would. The warning signs were clear but you chose to ignore them, and whilst avoidance seemed like the easiest option, at the end of the day you were only kidding yourself.”
Reputable media publications including CLASH, NOTION, and WONDERLAND, to mention a few, have praised Michael Blackwell’s music. After a number of releases, ‘Down On Your Luck’ is released in conjunction with the news that his much-anticipated debut EP, A Trip Around The Sun, will be released in October 2023. This will be followed by a string of major performances in Europe and the UK.
Michael Blackwell‘s success is set to soar as long as he keeps giving rock music a contemporary, catchy spin. To his expanding discography, ‘Down On Your Luck’ is a great addition.
ABOUT MICHAEL BLACKWELL
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Michael Blackwell is from Seaham in County Durham, England. Having worked as a touring musician and songwriter for many years, he is now prepared to set out on his own. His music blends traditional singer-songwriter, 90s grunge, 2000s indie, and contemporary alt-pop, drawing on a variety of inspirations. By listening to bands like Led Zeppelin, The Police, and The Beatles on his father’s record collection, he was motivated to learn the guitar at an early age. His love for the guitar and songwriting was cemented as he grew to be enamored with several 90s bands and musicians, including Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Stone Temple Pilots.
We Speak Music
Michele Ducci teases new album with uplifting indie single ‘Woman Like You’
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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