We Speak Music
Von Venn’s “Be Free” Is a Call to Think for Yourself
Dublin’s Von Venn are back with “Be Free,” the third single from their forthcoming album “Forgetting the Fall,” and they’re not messing around. After “You Can Talk To Me” and “Only In The Night,” the band has delivered something that feels both urgent and necessary right now.
The song is about exactly what the title says. It’s about thinking for yourself, speaking up, and refusing to let anyone control your perspective. In a world where information gets spun, filtered, and packaged as truth every single day, that message lands hard.
“There’s so much manipulation out there now,” the band explains. “Information gets filtered, twisted, presented as truth when it’s anything but. We wrote this as a reminder to question everything and form your own opinions. Don’t be anyone’s fool. Don’t play to someone else’s agenda.”
Heavy stuff, right? But here’s the thing: “Be Free” doesn’t feel preachy or heavy handed. It’s actually a feel good track that’ll get stuck in your head for days. There’s a nostalgic rock vibe running through it that feels familiar, like revisiting the bands you loved growing up, but with enough modern energy to keep it from feeling like a throwback exercise.
Vocalist Gary Cox really delivers here. His performance has that quality where you hear it once and it stays with you. And that chorus? Good luck getting it out of your head.
The lyrics don’t dance around anything. “Somebody’s watching you, got to keep watching you, checking what you’ve got to say, got to be sure that everybody’s thinking is right.” Then the chorus hits and suddenly you’re moving: “We should be free, say what we want, put it out to hear, tell anyone.”
There’s definitely frustration in this song, maybe even some anger bubbling underneath. But there’s also hope, which is what keeps it from feeling like just another complaint about the state of things. Von Venn aren’t just pointing out problems. They’re reminding you that your voice still matters and you should use it. And they manage to do all of that while making you want to crank the volume.
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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