We Speak Music
Sam Segurado Shares New Single ‘Phoenix’
Irish-Portuguese solo artist Sam Segurado releases his brand-new single ‘Phoenix’ showcasing the foundation of his love for music and unmatched talent for fusing captivating instruments with profound lyricism.
‘Phoenix’ sees Sam Segurado’s blend of alternative-indie-folk on this acoustic offering. Interplaying guitar and piano with his delicate vocal delivery atop a lush synthscape, its lyrics evoke the line Segurado so often treads between romance and sorrow.
“Draw you in the sand before you wash away”. This chorus line to ‘Phoenix’ came to Sam Segurado one night in a dream, and he immediately woke up in that early morning, wrote it down, and began to play it gently. The theme of the track is one of loss, whether about a relationship cut short, or a life taken too soon. Listeners will resonate with this profound theme, one which touches so many of us after the shared experiences of pandemic and war.
Sam Segurado began recording his sophomore album, The Remainder, in 2018 with Stephen Lovatt in Segurado’s childhood home in Portugal. They recorded ‘Phoenix’ in one take, where you can hear the crickets and even an airplane passing overhead in the second verse. One of his childhood best friends, Christina Campbell, later added gorgeous backing vocals in her Scottish lilt. Sam Segurado finished the song with producer Shane Becker, who encouraged him to make this track a stand-alone single.
Drawing on his own personal struggles and experiences, Sam Segurado explores tales of difficult times. The forthcoming album evokes a superhero moniker, the heroism of survival. The album’s message only increased in significance through its own rocky recording, turbulence directly exposed to him, and the war in Europe, in turn, the record earning its title, The Remainder.
Speaking about the track, Sam Segurado explains, “It’s about loss. Maybe the end of a relationship, or maybe someone who is gone too soon. That’s part of why I decided to release it on Jeff Buckley’s birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that he left so young, but his influence on my music will never die.”
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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