We Speak Music
senna JMB Shares Debut Album ‘Purity’
senna JMB, an artist based in Brussels, creates a very personal, vibrant, and surreal world incorporating elements of cloud rap, postpunk, IDM-influenced electronics, and experimental pop. He returns with his debut album, Purity.
Purity, deliberately concentrated on ‘songs’ as such, at times evoking the pop-meets-post-punk aesthetic of Yves Tumour or the pop-rap of Yung Lean. Together with Kiche (Ismaël Iken), the beats were closely co-produced, and while they are unmistakably punky and club-oriented, they also carry a strong sense of nostalgia and urban unrest.
The breaky beats, colorful synths, and fluffy autotune all have a contemporary digital atmosphere to them, even though Purity’s sound isn’t entirely modern. The unrelenting interplay between the frenzied and unapologetic guitars results in a sound that is reminiscent of discordant guitar tones from the ‘80s and ‘90s yet in step with today’s hybrid internet culture. senna JMB has one foot in the past, but both eyes are focused on the future.
With those guitar aspects, the eight-track album’s intention becomes even more personal because, at the age of 14, senna JMB began learning the guitar on his own. He then performed live at Pukkelpop, Best Kept Secret, and Ancienne Belgique, among other venues, as a guitarist, lyricist, and co-vocalist with the band Fornet.
Purity, has lively and upbeat productions with dreaming, ethereal, and punky moments combined with melancholia and bleakness. The genre blend of cloud-rap, post-punk, hyper-pop, pop, and electronica mashes the entire album creatively together in a nice manner.
senna JMB takes listeners on a self-referential journey through his punky, image-heavy rap singles ‘Weekend’, ‘Bossa Nova’, and ‘Lotus’. He blends memories from his childhood with views of and escapes from the present, leading him to a hubris-induced crash into a fantasized, collapsing future. The songs feature a strong bassline, ethereal synths, and guitars, lively and breaky drums, and existential lyrics in swaying rap flows.
‘North Sea’ is a darker track that features lyrics full of escape and drift, a danceable trap beat, and IDM-inspired keys. While ‘Genesis’ captures the rawness and bewildering attractions of the city, ‘Slap Back’ harmonizes a Brazilian baile funk rhythm with carefree and sunny atmospheres.
senna JMB displays a gloomy side on the songs ‘Chains’ and ‘Retro Green.’ His expressiveness is captivating and gives Purity’s unique sound new depth through enigmatic, introspective themes.
On the album, senna JMB comments, “Purity, counts eight uninhibited tracks that surf on a dreamy energy and create a rule-free world that makes it impossible for senna JMB to be pigeonholed. Its title refers to rebirth through music, to staying true to intuition, the freedom of inconsistency and change.”
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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