We Speak Music
The Future Is Chrome: Navigating 4ra 4ra’s Audiovisual Universe
From the first pulse of “CHROME UP,” CHROMEsoME signals a departure from conventional EPs into a fully realized cybernetic realm. Metallic synths, cinematic percussion, and layered textures establish a sonic environment that is reflective, ritualistic, and immediately immersive. 4ra 4ra’s vision is clear: this is a world to inhabit, not simply to listen to.
The title track, “CHROMEsoME,” crystallizes the EP’s thematic ambitions. Techno-phonk energy collides with introspection as the artist examines the tension between the organic and the synthetic. The track is both exhilarating and unsettling, inviting listeners to question what remains authentically human in an age of technological augmentation.
“MUGSHOT TYPE” brings DIGITAL TEETH into the fold, amplifying the EP’s exploration of digital identity. The track’s glitch-laden hyperpop energy underscores themes of resistance, mutation, and untraceability, positioning the collaboration as both a musical and conceptual highlight.
4ra 4ra’s meticulous approach to the EP’s four-stage arc—Upload, Optimization, Glitch, Reprogramming—elevates the work beyond traditional musical storytelling. Each stage functions as a lens through which to interpret the ongoing negotiation between selfhood and technological influence. The sequencing allows the listener to experience transformation as a structured, yet visceral, process.
The final track, “4GI,” introduces an ethereal meditation on Artificial General Intelligence. By utilizing AI-generated vocals, 4ra 4ra simultaneously interrogates and humanizes machine intelligence, transforming a potentially cold concept into an emotionally resonant narrative climax.
CHROMEsoME is ultimately a striking example of interdisciplinary artistry. It is audacious, cerebral, and immersive—a work that challenges the boundaries of what an EP can be, redefining music as a vehicle for conceptual and sensory exploration.
“With CHROMEsoME, 4ra 4ra isn’t just releasing an EP, she’s delivering a fully immersive audiovisual world that pushes the boundaries of electronic and pop,” says music publicist Danielle Holian, Decent Music PR. “The project captures the tension between empowerment and alienation in a hyper-digital era, while showcasing her as a true multidisciplinary force. It’s bold, concept-driven, and positions her at the forefront of the next wave of genre-defying artists.”
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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