We Speak Music
Sohodolls ‘Territory Of Your Heart’
“I always wondered what the dynamic was like between Caesar and Cleopatra. Sometimes you can fall for someone who feels like you’ve finally met your match”, explains principal Sohodolls songwriter Maya von
Doll. “This song is about falling for someone other-worldly that blurs the lines between feeling protected and being controlled. And it’s also that moment of headiness where you don’t care which it is because it’s new and exciting and feels like fantasy”, she further reveals.
Like its predecessor ‘Napoleon Baby’, Maya von Doll takes inspiration from some of the most formidable historical characters to depict and relate to moments of her own modern life in 2024. But while, ‘Napoleon Baby’ was an electro-pop dance-floor filler, ‘Territory Of Your Heart’ plumbs darker pop depths with Maya von Doll’s seductive airy vocal sweeping over a swarm of thick driving bass loaded analogue synths. Produced by Ängelsson (Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Swae Lee, Tory Lanez, Iggy Azalea), the track is a slick and infectious ride through deep passions that sits somewhere between the retro sounds of The Eurythmics, Kate Bush and alt-pop of Charlie XCX and Billie Eilish.
You like to live fast, but you kiss slow, like to undo everything that I know. And your fingers know no borders. Know my body better than I could ever hope to”, Maya von Dollsings, as her exhilarating erotic fantasy develops alongside the track’s crystalline synthwave moods and dark grungy gloss, creating a powerful sense of danger and intrigue.
Having climbed up the viral Billboard charts in recent years via the help of Madonna’s daughter dancing to one of their 00’s tracks on TikTok, and with Netflix’s top 10 series ‘Geek Girl’ championing their recent single ‘Bad’ this year, plus a slew of new press and radio attention from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Nels Hylton, Absolute Radio’s Frank Skinner and Atwood Magazine, the revived and refreshed Sohodolls are continuing on their mission with ‘Territory Of Your Heart’ to stake their claim as one of the best ‘lost’ 00’s bands who are also very much on the pulse and highly relevant for 2024.
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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