We Speak Music
Michele Ducci releases “Why You?” and full “Film for Songs: The Great Book of Nature” videos!
“Why You?” is the second part of “Film for Songs: The Great Book of Nature”, an animated short film by Michele Ducci and Letizia Mandolesi. The film, which contains two new songs, “Why Do I Wake Up Every Morning?” and “Why You?”, tells the story of an animated book called “The Great Book of Nature”, which itself purports to tell the story of a printed book by the same name.
“Why You?” is a jaunty fairground waltz with a big uplifting chorus, which appears to run counter to the on-screen events, evoking the Brechtian concept of the disengagement effect, in which the audience is encouraged to engage with the story intellectually rather than emotionally.
Set in a police state where music is banned and real thought is suppressed by the introduction of a dumbed down language (‘Bla Bla Bla’), the film introduces a man named Elpino, who buys an animated AI book called “The Great Book of Nature” and embarks on a Kafkaesque train journey, where an alien creature, Marsia Joy, who represents music, is pursued by a policeman for merely existing. Marsia can cry a flood of tears to put out fires caused by the oppressors and enclose violent pursuers in cocoons, turning them into butterflies.
Rather than talking about other things, the book talks about itself. Says Ducci, “The thing that interests me about AI is that at the bottom of what should preserve remembrances, and memories seems to be a memory without remembrance and remembrance without the memory that precedes each remembered memory.”
The “blink and you will miss it” ending provides a final bizarre twist to the tale.
Michele Ducci will perform live at ‘Nursery of Freedom’, an all-day event of live music, art, film and tattoos at New River Studios in London on Sunday 27th July.
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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