We Speak Music
SUGS Expands His Universe with “I Ain’t Lyin’!”
Brace yourself, Sugs is back and I Ain’t Lyin’! might be his most wildly charming release yet. The musician, illustrator, and professional mischief-maker (pronounced “sh-ugs”, yes, like that) returns with a track that is equal parts chaotic, emotional, and gloriously unpredictable.
Since his first drop in 2018, Sugs has been quietly and loudly building one of the internet’s most delightfully strange underground corners. His music is a collision of cartoonish lyricism, sharp-tongued honesty, and feelings he probably pretends he doesn’t have. Call it Alternative Rap if you want, but that barely scratches the surface. Punk, techno, pop, full-on gremlin energy — if it sparks an emotion, Sugs throws it in the blender.
With I Ain’t Lyin’!, he levels up once again. The track is playful on the surface, but its production and delivery hit with a layered intensity that only Sugs could pull off. Produced by hrcnszn with additional elements, mixing, and full sonic chaos applied by Sugs in his bedroom studio, the song is stitched together from synths, samples, distortion, VSTs, old faithful gear, and the same microphone he has been shouting his truths into since 2017.
But this is not just another single. It is the opening chapter of something bigger.
“I’ve been working on a project for a bit. It has changed shape many times but I have always been inspired by the story of Pinocchio. This song is meant as a kind of world building for the things I am going to talk about in future songs.”
Pinocchio, but make it weird, emotional, and a little chaotic. This new universe promises fantasy, misdirection, self-discovery, and enough twists to make a puppet’s head spin.
Fun, frantic, heartfelt, and bursting with imagination, I Ain’t Lyin’! is the sound of Sugs expanding his world one explosive, fantastical beat at a time. And if this is the first chapter, the rest of the story is going to be wild.
Sugs is not just releasing music. He is building a universe. And he definitely ain’t lyin’.
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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