Floating Clouds is the new recording project of Portland-based artist Alexandre Duccini, who last week shared with us his debut LP under the name titled With A Shared Memory. Adding to the reliability of the Bud Tapes catalog, as well as the ever-impressive PNW scene, what Floating Clouds brings to the table on this debut is facing a deep darkness holding a flashlight with new batteries; a deliberate and intuitive story of navigating life through the unpredictable circumstances of grief and learning how to approach love when it feels so stretched thin.  

Having played in many bands and releasing music under his own name for some time now, Floating Clouds embraces the make-up of a band more than a solo project, although these songs are so personally embedded into Duccini’s story. With really no intention to record a full album, taking some songs to The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington just for fun, what came out on the other end was brought to life by contributions from family and friends, old and new, where Floating Clouds as a musical unit explore the need for dire release and ecstatic collaboration, fluctuating within impressive dynamics, searing guitars, well-worn instrumentals and a poised heart. 

Healing can be like picking for springs and screws in a patch of grass — a begrudging effort, a task of minuscule factors and massive focus. With each stray blade in your finger, each random stick poking out, it doesn’t matter what you pick up until you find what you set out for in the beginning. With A Shared Memory plays as a delicate reminder, embracing each step forward as a mini success, or if anything at all, a reminder to keep looking. And with each track, Duccini’s collection begins to grow in quantity, and the relief, the joy, the individual finds begin to form a much larger picture, every small addition something that has been lost to him over time. But this isn’t an album that focuses only on the pain, but rather a benchmark of gratitude, understanding the role in which that pain has played in his life and how far he has come ever since. 

We recently got to catch up with Duccini to discuss new beginnings, reutilizing memories to heal, and how With A Shared Memory came to be.

Shea Roney: I know you have been recording and releasing under your own name for some time now, but With A Shared Memory is the first piece of music under the name Floating Clouds. What made you want to adapt this new name and did it in any way act as a marking of new beginnings to you creatively and personally? 

Alexandre Duccini: It certainly feels that way. I’ve been in bands ever since I was a teenager, and that has always been my lifestyle. But I was always doing solo recordings that was always just a thing in addition to the bands. I moved to Portland in November of 2023, but before I moved, I recorded a solo EP at my friends Eli and Ashley’s recording space next to their house on Whidbey Island. It was the first time solo recording was really thought out and something more than just setting up a microphone in my bedroom. But this project wasn’t even meant to really be an album in my brain when we started recording it. It was my sister Sophia and her boyfriend Alex, who’s a good friend of mine who just started working at a studio in Anacortes, Washington, and we booked two days up there. The thought was basically that it would be fun to book studio time with the two of them and we’ll maybe make a song together. But it went so well that they thought I should just do an album, just keep doing this. Then so many other people ended up playing on it, and I ended up making friends here in Portland who ended up playing on it by the end. It really felt like this is a band, this is not just a solo thing. I was glad that it turned into that and I’m hoping that it continues. The bandmates that I have now are super wonderful and it feels like there’s a lot of really sweet, energized feelings about it.

SR: Having this lifestyle of functioning within a band, but still always centered around making music, what did you begin to focus on differently when you started writing your own songs?

AD: I did get more intentional with the songs I was making and had more of a personally intense relationship to them. I feel like I also just started turning the corner in my life of knowing myself, being at a point with self-love, where I’m actually able to write something real, and it feels okay to sit there and not be distanced by irony, or being a heavy, loud band. I think there’s an aspect, too, though that songs feel really mysterious, and these songs feel really special to me. I think I worked really hard on the songwriting side of it and thought a lot more about what felt important to me to say in music. Songs are kind of like these spells that happen. One moment it never existed, and then some neurons fire in a brain, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, this is it.’

SR: Do you know the Irish term for song? 

AD: No, I do not.

SR: This is my one fun fact. They are referred to as ‘airs’, which I learned watching a documentary about Shane McGowan. In it he was talking about how he thinks that term is beautifully representative because songs are mysterious in a way in which they’re all around you, but it takes a specific effort and openness to reach out and grab it.

AD: That definitely resonates with me, that is such a beautiful thing. Songs are just kind of everywhere around us, but you also have to work on yourself to become a person who can hear them. It’s a beautiful thing that everyone can write songs. I think what is special about creativity is that there’s no bar for entry, you just make something.

SR: It feels like the ethos of recording this project was to make music with great people and to just have fun. How did this crew come to be and what did you get out of it creatively and personally while working with these musicians?

AD: They were people I met when I moved here to Portland. They are fantastic musicians who have played in a lot of bands here that I was seeing and really connecting to. I was playing a solo show, and I just asked them if they wanted to play that show with me and they said yes. Then I was like, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m sort of making a record if you wanna play on that, too?’ We recorded over last spring and summer, and I think part of the intention that was set was to just get into the studio with people who seem to be on the same wavelength as me at this moment, and ideally just have a lot of fun while we’re there. I’ve had experiences with recording that were more frustrating, or felt like I won’t be able to live with myself if this goes wrong, you know? I needed, at a point in my life, to shift my way of thinking about this and put less pressure on things turning out a certain way. The focus should be if we’re all laughing and having a good time while we’re at the studio, then it was successful, no matter how much was accomplished. It’s hard to say exactly what I feel like I got out of it other than I feel so happy and excited about the album. I’m so happy with it as a thing that’s done, but there were multiple moments while we were making it where I didn’t want this to ever be done. I feel revitalized about music from this experience. I just wanna ride that wave as often as possible.

SR: It’s also such a beautiful and personal collection of songs. I can only imagine experiencing this constant joy was so reassuring as these songs are coming out.

AD: Any artist has a period of time where they spiral with self-doubt about being creative, if I’m any good at it or if I should continue to do it. I think part of what has felt really significant for me personally is that it just felt like it went so well, from the page to the studio. This was the first time I really ever experienced that throughout the whole process, knowing that this feels right.

SR: This entire album feels like many different, individual points of reflection for you. And like you said, describing the end process as ‘this feels right’, but these songs fluctuate between joy and grief throughout. Was there a thematic progression that was noticeable or was it something that you had to look back at after the fact and realize it then?

AD: That fluctuation will realistically probably exist forever. These songs in this project, I’m riding this highway of excitement, but there is reality, and there’s still plenty of reasons to have a lot of different feelings about life all the time. An idea that was kind of embraced for me personally around the writing of these songs was that no matter what, pain and grief are inevitable. They’re coming, you know? It’s a thing that you will experience. I’m trying to get better at not just borrowing those feelings from the future and letting myself experience the full spectrum of those feelings. That also means really trying to allow joy and love to have their moments as well. I hope that that is reflected in the album, too, that it really has all of that in there. I think all of these songs exist as reminders for myself that this is really happening to me, to look at and sit with and be like, ‘okay, this is real life, and that means a lot.’ Don’t be passive about it.

SR: I mean, the title With A Shared Memory feels crucial to really experiencing it all. A shared memory, whether that be with a loved one, a friend, or the crew you make music with, it’s always between you and another party. But when you go through grief, it feels like you’re split in two, between the healing and then the grieving, like a shared memory between these two split parts of you. As you bring up reflections, and really referring to and experiencing them through this process, what is your relationship to these memories now? Did you find yourself redefining the way in which you approached them as you were writing these songs?

AD: I think sometimes I felt a little bit guilty of the songs potentially portraying myself or my experience of life as a little bit glorified or too pretty. I can feel like one thing, but when you go to the pool of your experience to write something about the process of translating those experiences into songs, it allows me to sit with them in a way where I feel much more gratitude for those experiences. Maybe it’s more than when I was raw, bare, experiencing them as initial feelings, you know? So, like people that maybe once I was angry at, I’m sort of thinking about them when I’m writing, and I start to remember how much I love them, you know? There’s something special, for me at least, that songwriting can do, where it reveals another side of my experiences that maybe allows for more space to be grateful for things that at other times were hard to even want to face.

SR: I mean, it’s just wild how many different angles you can approach a single memory, just as you follow it down the line.

AD: Yeah, for sure. When writing, I feel like there was a cognizant part of me that was thinking, ‘can I be more loving here more than maybe I was, or have been?’ I wanted the songs to feel loving.

SR: Do you have any plans to celebrate the release?

AD: We’re doing the release show Thursday. We actually don’t have any show on Friday, so the band and some friends are gonna do a little listening party ourselves. I’ve been really trying to be better about celebrating and being in the act of celebration. That has been a thing that my therapist advised me to do more, talking about how more traditional lifestyles have these baked in opportunities for celebration, like graduations and things like that. So, it’s good with music to also be like, ‘okay, we’re going to have a celebration’. It’ll be kind of nice to just spend the day outside and all that. 

SR: Is the album celebration something you’re looking forward to? 

AD: I wonder, I don’t know yet [laughs]. I’m definitely excited for it to be out. I think I’m also bracing for that weird experience when you’ve worked really hard on something, and it means a lot to you, there’s some expectation that builds up, and when you actually share it and it’s different from whatever weird expectation you’ve built up, then the other side of it is feeling disappointment, you know? I think I’ve been unconsciously kind of bracing for some weird feeling of disappointment. 

SR: I mean, that’s fair. It’s something so close to you, so it’s definitely going to sway a ton. 

AD: That feeling of like, I’ll release it, and then the next week I’ll go back to work. Yeah, okay, that’s right, my whole life didn’t completely rearrange itself because I released an album [laughs].

SR: Yeah, that makes sense. But this one seems special. 

AD: Yeah, it feels that way. I am definitely feeling celebratory. It’s really nice, my bandmates have been so amazing, and feeling their excitement about it has been really cool. Also, just having other people be a part of it and be excited about it in that way definitely helps me feel like I got a butterfly’s kind of giddiness.

You can listen to With a Shared Memory out everywhere now, as well as order a cassette via Bud Tapes.

Written by Shea Roney | All Photos Courtesy of Floating Clouds