We Speak Music

Mieko Shimizu unveils new video ahead of London experimental night!

Published

2 years ago

March 7, 2024

Don Reed

“My Tentacles” is the quixotic single re-release by radical, nonconformist, Japanese singer and multi-instrumentalist, Mieko Shimizu.

The single, which has picked up airplay from BBC 6 Music’s Deb Grant & Tom Ravenscroft lately, is the offbeat, unworldliness that is; “My Tentacles”, the title track of the soon to be re-released album of the same name. It is be-thronged by chimeric fusions, dysfunctional beats and startling mutations.

Following the single’s release on 9^th February, Mieko is now back with an equally radical video for “My Tentacles”, created by by diz_qo– https://linktr.ee/diz_qo

For this free-spirited champion of outsider art pop, her Tentacles are truly her own, Mieko has played at Sonar, alongside Kraftwerk as well as support for Goldfrapp and Massive Attack at their Melt Down Festival. She is currently artist in residence for Wonky Plonky Electronk, an experimental, electronic live event which is touring the UK throughout 2024, the next show being on 28^th March at The Cinema Room at All Is Joy in London.

On 28^th March, Wonky Plonky Electronk takeover the former Warner Bros cinema now run by arts collective, All is Joy. The line-up features boundary defining artists, including Wrangler featuring electronic legend, Stephen Malinder (Cabaret Voltaire), synthmeister supreme Benge (John Fox & The Math) and Phil Winter (Tuung), collaborators all with John Grant in Creepshow. Along with nonconformist Japanese outsider Mieko Shimizu, noise-bass guerrilla Dhangsha, modular synth landscaper Shape Navigator and break through Sound Artist & Composer Jasmine Morris.

She has released 7 albums, her most recent album is “I Bloom”, it features former member of The Cardiacs, William D Drake, who also features on the EP Write to Be along with German artist, Barbara Morgenstern & Polish Artist Orla Schmitt. Her last release was the sonic explosion of the EP “Phenomena of the Mind”. Other albums include the eponymous album of drum n’ bass fury, as her alter ego Apache 61.

Mieko has worked with an extensive range of artists including Japan’s Mick Karn, Nitin Sawhney, Riz MC, David Cunningham, Robert Lippok and has also re-mixed the likes of Coldcut and Haruomi Hosono of ‘Yellow Magic Orchestra’.

We Speak Music

Michele Ducci teases new album with uplifting indie single ‘Woman Like You’

Published

22 hours 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.