Feature: Michele Ducci „NUBA Live Tape“
Michele Ducci im Interview zum neuen Album „NUBA Live Tape“
Michele Ducci im Interview zum neuen Album; Fotocredit: Letizia Mandolisi
Der ehemalige M+A- und Santii-Mitglied Michele Ducci, der im Juni 2024 sein Solo-Debütalbum „SIVE“ veröffentlichte, kehrte am 24. Januar 2025 mit seinem neuesten Werk „NUBA Live Tape“ zurück. Wie der Name bereits andeutet, wurde das Album live im Studio auf Tape aufgenommen. Es enthält drei neu interpretierte Versionen von Tracks aus „SIVE“ sowie vier neue Stücke. Noch kurz vor Album-Release veröffentlichte Michele Duccis seine neue Single „Even before“. Begleitend zur Veröffentlichung wurde ein Musikvideo veröffentlicht, das von Michele selbst in Zusammenarbeit mit Letizia Mandolesi erstellt wurde.
Grundsätzlich hat Michele Ducci sehr viel ausprobiert. Für ihn ist dieses neue Album wie eine Brücke zum Vorgängerwerk. In „HIC“ wird die perkussive, raue Beat-Poesie des Originals in eine bewegend traurige Klavierballade verwandelt. Die neuen Stücke sind z.B. „Even Before“ und „It’s Hard to be Easily Loved“. Als ich das erste mal reingehört habe, kamen sie mir sehr sprunghaft vor. Und sommerlich. Michele Ducci experimentiert eben auch sehr viel und gerne. Dabei ist der Ansatz des Italieners so rein wie nur möglich zu klingen.
Das gesamte Album wurde in nur drei Tagen aufgenommen. Im super Schnelldurchgang sozusagen. Da habe ich ja als Zuhörer immer etwas die Angst, dass es arg Gehudelt wirkt. Das Live-Tape ist aber dadurch sehr authentisch, weil es eben on point aufgenommen wurde. Ohne große Korrekturen. So findet der Musiker immer auch einen Weg in den Song und auch wieder heraus.
Im Interview sprechen wir mit ihm über seine Selbstzweifel und Ängst. Aber auch über die Intensität der Aufnahmen in nur drei Tagen. Er liefert zu allem ganz vortreffliche Antworten.
Michele Ducci: „SIVE is the album through which I managed to deal with myself after a long period of doubts about my passage on this planet. I wanted to reach an essence without more predicates or sauces of decorum that often tend to hide more than to highlight something. It was very nice but also very complex. As often happens, after such a personal job, I was a little afraid of the after of the after. I did everything in a race. I began working on the live preview at home before I could even find a jack and speaker to use. It happened that in the preparation of the live set of SIVE new songs began to come in chains. As I try to do every time I prepare a live set, I went to record the live set on tape. I found myself, almost without realizing it, with Nuba. I’m lucky to have a label like Monotreme Records and Kim Harrison-Lavoie. I sent the takes and we all fell in love with it. I learned the lesson: learn from the confidence that flowers have when they open every spring, or sounds when they come to us.“
The recording process for NUBA Live Tape was very quick, completed in just three days. How did working with such a tight timeline influence the energy and spontaneity of the final sound?
Michele Ducci: „It was beautiful. For me it is an ethical-political issue of vital importance. By doing so you can’t think too much and you have to do as you do in life: groping. I like to deal with life that lives and not with abstractions. It’s a kind of art of navigation. It was really essential for me to proceed by doing everything that is not done in the mainstream, as well as in its twin mainstream alternatives: not to use useless budgets, not to waste centuries of time pilled by possibilities, to find escapes. Do as one does on the run. Art can no longer think of producing without coming to terms with its horizon: the migrant.“
You mentioned that the album includes reimagined versions of tracks from SIVE alongside new material. Could you elaborate on the creative process behind transforming a song like “HIC” into a piano ballad? Is it like a “rebirth”?
Michele Ducci: „Absolutely yes: it’s a rebirth. After all, it is the variation of the theme the subject of the songs… the seriality of the recaps of the songs in different variations. I am very fascinated by Glenn Gould precisely for this variation that is varied constituting itself as an infinite theme, present in the Bach: The Goldberg Variations.“
Your latest single, “Even Before,” is described as a bouncy and summery pop track. What inspired the mood and direction of this song, and how does it fit into the overall narrative of the album?
Michele Ducci: „Even Before came at night while I was strumming with an old Bontempi. At first they were two songs, which became one. I really liked the idea of keeping samba and waltz together. It’s a bit like the way I’ve always felt the air of the Romagna Riviera, in my case. The Bontempi manages to create that almost Proustian effect of a living memory that sounded even before we began to remember.“
Producer und Musiker Michele Ducci im Interview zum neuen Album; Fotocredit: Letizia Mandolisi
You’ve had a fascinating career journey, from M+A to Santii, and now as a solo artist. How has your evolution as an artist shaped the themes and experimental nature of NUBA Live Tape?
Michele Ducci: „Nuba is the name of my cat. Let’s say that I have decided, since SIVE, to do only what, once I will not be here anymore, can have a stretch of life that is exactly mine. All my personal and artistic work is an attempt to free myself from ghosts and not to be afraid of the ‘who’ that we are.“
Michele Ducci: „A sort of wave of passion. I really hope very much in my small way to be able to contribute to a resistance that claims the fact that the music is alive and in good health. Many of my colleagues still do it but take it for granted that as an event music is dead. A bit like what happened with philosophy in the 20th century: many philosophers began to do it claiming that it had died, basically, because of technology (I’m thinking of Heiddeger). Instead, I am very close to those who continue to resist for the life of music. For the Pythagoreans it was essential to be able to order the cacophonic presence of the whole, something that even a child in the dark knows well, or who sings at work so as not to feel the fatigue. I care a lot about my naivety and I don’t feel guilty about making music thinking that it’s made of the same substance that the universe is made of. Each entity is a song from an immense album that is the solar system.“
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