We Speak Music
Softly purring vocals and pensive beauty on new Michele Ducci single ‘It’s Hard to be Easily Loved’
Following the release of his debut solo album, ‘SIVE’, in June, Michele Ducci, former member of dance-pop duo M+A and and Hip Hop duo Santii, returned to the studio to tape some new live recordings of alternative versions of several tracks from ‘SIVE’ plus a few new songs, including new single ‘It’s Hard to be Easily Loved’.
The single is out now, accompanied by a video of Ducci performing the song against an atmospheric backdrop of watercolour paintings created by Ducci and Letizia Mandolesi.
Like a warm blanket on a foggy autumn evening, ‘It’s Hard to be Easily Loved’ envelops you in Ducci’s softly purring vocals, backed by sparsely strummed nylon guitar. The chorus ramps up the warmth with the addition of Letizia Mandolesi’s softly vocalised ‘Aaahs’. Yet another pensive beauty from Michele Ducci’s impressive solo catalogue.
Says Ducci, “I was improvising with the nylon guitar while it was raining and slowly It’s Hard to Be Easily Loved began to form. It’s the first song among other unpublished songs that I’m doing live and that will be released at the beginning of next year.
Being loved or understood, at times, seems to work like those strange crossings that are the changes of the season, or like falling asleep. It can be very difficult and seems to happen, if it happens and when it happens, out of time. So every expectation appears to be a useless expense. A nylon and paw-legged organ song came out of it that reminds me of the yellow fog that makes the paraeidoly of a cat in the poem The Love Song of A.J. Prufrock by Elliot:
“Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”
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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