Starlight Assembly is a collaborative project uniting Italian musician, producer, and sonic experimenter Matteo Uggeri with Dominic Appleton, the iconic voice of the British band Breathless and longtime contributor to This Mortal Coil. Born from a remote collaboration, the project represents Appleton’s first significant work outside Breathless in which he also takes on the role of lyricist, marking a new creative chapter after decades of writing exclusively within his band. The collaboration took shape after Uggeri – known for projects such as Sparkle In Grey and Open To The Sea – initially contacted Appleton for a single contribution. Encouraged indirectly by former 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, Appleton embraced the challenge of working beyond his long-standing musical framework, leading to the formation of Starlight Assembly. Their debut album, Starlight And Still Air (2021), was assembled through long-distance exchanges and features contributions from members of Sparkle In Grey alongside a wide network of collaborators. Building on the strong reception of their debut, Uggeri and Appleton quickly began work on a second album. Released four years later, There Will Be Fireworks refines and expands the project’s aesthetic, favoring a more crepuscular mood and a clearer song form while retaining complex rhythmic structures and textural depth. Starlight Assembly occupies a distinctive space between experimental music and modern songcraft, driven by mutual admiration, shared sensibilities, and a rare convergence of voices shaped by decades of underground culture.

What Matteo Says: “I chose Symphony in Melancholy, that is one of my favourite songs in my whole musical production ever (not only in S.A.). It came out from something I was working on my own, mostly on the beats. But at one point I decided to also use a trumpet that my friend Alessandro Sesana previously recorded from one of the tracks of Tales from the Underground River of Open to the Sea (actually the project where you can find the first collaboration I had with Dominic). I provisorially called it Glass Hug and sent the file to London. The structure was, as often, quite weird and not really “chorus/verse”, but Dominic arranged it with beautiful keyboard lines and also amazing, moving, sweet and melancholic vocals. I still remember listening to it right after the download, with headphones, on my sofa, as it was evening and my family was already in bed.
Then I did the mixing and afterwards sent it back to him. He proposed to involve Gary (Mundy, Breathless guitarist, n.d.r.) to add some layer of guitars. I don’t remember if it was the first time he asked that but I was more than happy. And even happier when I got the files from Mr. Mundy. Actually the song was pretty packed of sounds already (my fault! I tend to be maximalist sometimes), so Gary was incredibly delicate and wise in finding the right spot in terms of frequencies and where to put the 5 (five!) tracks of guitars he sent me. They could be a song on their own. While writing this, now I decided to get back to the mix in Ableton Live and so here is a special gift to the listeners and readers of Triste: an excerpt where I put in solo only these guitar lines. Isn’t it amazing? And, at the end, also with the backing vocals of Sharon Shani (a very gifted friend of Dominic that does that for us since the first album) it’s really a track I love! I often find myself singing it when I’m around…“

What Dominic Says: “The Not Dead is a song built around a poem by Simon Armitage (Britain’s Poet Laureate). The poem had an incredible impact on me the first time I read it. It’s a poem about the experience of some British soldiers returning from the Bosnian and Iraq wars. Because of the problematic public perception of these wars their reception was thankless “returning home as untouchables, as haunting and haunted ghosts”. Though many were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder they received little, to no, help. Subsequently turning to drink, drugs and self-harm to blot out the images of war. The poem is a punch to the gut but, to me, it also reads like a lyric. So, for a long time I mulled over the idea of putting it to music. I felt quite hesitant about using someone else’s words for a purpose that they weren’t intended for. Not to mention, such a delicate and heavy topic. 
We only put the first half of the poem to music (here to read the poem in its entirety here’s a link to someone’s analysis of it). Also, thank you Mr Armitage for giving us your permission to use it on the album!“

Their Mixtape:

Dominic Appleton’s picks:

Pere Ubu – Modern Dance (1978)

“In 1978 I was 14, going on 15, and at school with Gary Mundy (Ramleh, Kleistwhar, Breathless). He made the first mixtape I was ever given. It was an absolute revelation, a beautiful mix of the American artists emerging at the time like Television, Pere Ubu, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Suicide and stuff from closer to home like Roxy Music, Jean Michel Jarre, The Only Ones and Ian Dury. There were also dialogue clips from movies. The one I most clearly remember was a scene from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Really vicious camp stuff. Wonderful.
Not only was that tape an education in making the perfect mixtape but it ignited in me a love for music that, before then, I was only half aware of. From that day I hassled my parents for chores so I could earn money. My aim was to earn enough to afford a new album a week and I achieved that aim. I could pick any track from that tape but I’m choosing Modern Dance because I remember it was the first track on side 1. It flicked a switch inside me. It was so fresh and so original. My goodness it has stood the test of time. Nearly 50 years later it still sounds as fresh and exciting as it did to me as a teenager.”

Jacques Brel – La Chanson des Vieux Amants (1967)

” It’s now 1981/1982 and I am the most unbelievably pretentious 18 year old. I’m smoking Gauloises, reading Jean Paul Sartre (and not understanding it) and listening to Japan, The Velvet Underground and David Bowie. It was surely just a matter of time before I discovered Jacques Brel. He arrived in a mix tape given to me by Anne Clark, a poet Gary and I were working with at the time. To be honest I think on that tape she put Amsterdam and Les Désespérés. Those two songs were a gateway into the wonderful world of Jacques Brel. That’s one of the major functions of the mixtape isn’t it? To share what you love by introducing new music that will hopefully inspire the recipient to investigate further. Well, it did. Thank you Anne!
This song is about the durability of love. It acknowledges the work and compromises one has to put in to sustain that love. It’s so beautifully done. If that weren’t enough, it is also one of the most gorgeous arrangements of a song I’ve ever heard. The strings and vocal in the chorus take my breath away every time I hear them. It’s very melodramatic. Some people might not like that. I say, close your eyes and go with it.”

Ms. John Soda – Hands (2006)

“For some reason I listened to this song a lot while we were making There Will Be Fireworks. And, when I say a lot I mean A LOT. I wonder if you can hear it in there?
I think it’s pertinent to your mixtape because, like Teo and I, it’s a collaboration. These collaborations tend to work through exchanging music files. For Teo and I the exchange is between London and Milan. For Stephanie Böhm (Couch) and Micha Archer (Notwist) the exchange is quite possibly only between different streets in Munich but the principle remains the same! There are parallels with the idea of the mixtape in the simple fact that we’re sending one another new music to see how each other will react to it.
I like the simplicity of this song and the way in which she pulls such a warm and rich vocal melody out of it. I’m a sucker for melody. One of the great joys for me in Starlight Assembly is finding the melody in some of Teo’s more abstract compositions. I think I have more of a “pop” sensibility within our experiments. For me, it’s a major part of the beauty in what we do.”

Matteo Uggeri’s picks:

The Cure – Lament

“For sure not the most known song by The Cure, it’s nevertheless very special to me. Not only because I do like it very much per se, but also because it was one of the tracks that a friend of mine, Agostino, recorded me on a mixtape back in the school age. I think it was ’92, the last year of high school. Of course I heard The Cure before, actually the popular singles like Close to me or Caterpillar, and related videos. But somehow they didn’t really hit me. Something within myself was searching for a more intimate, melancholic music. And that band, well, was doing also that. But I could discover that only through friends, and that mixtape in particular. Agostino had older brothers, so he and his bros were the bridge for me to Joy Division and other dark stuff. My musical life changed. He was also one of the first people I played with, although the several albums made in the 90’s with Norm, our band, have never been released.
I mention here The Cure because, among the several sources that I’m used to sample, there’s a drum pattern from Boris Williams in one of the songs of There Will Be Fireworks. Although this declaration might be enough for some lawyer’s work in London, I prefer to let the readers (and the lawyers) discover which one it is.”

Lola Young – Messy

“Well, a long time has passed since high school, but I’m happy to say that I’m still discovering great music from past and recent times. Nobody does me mixtapes anymore, and not even playlists, their present counterpart. I do not use Spotify, neither as a listener nor as an artist (S.A. are on it but I’d prefer not), but on some occasions I must admit that it helped me in discovering great stuff. This song came out from a (rather crappy) playlist that Marco, my Pilates teacher, was playing at our classes. Surprised by its quality, I asked him (gasping, as I was in the middle of an exercise) what it was. He didn’t know. It’s not surprising, as the playlist was made automatically on some algorithm he couldn’t control. “It’s a girl called Lola Young, the song is Messy“. Days afterwards, at home, I searched for it. I found it amazing and I remember listening to it hundreds of times, in repeat, while I was working. Really as I did when I was a boy with Cure, Ministry, Bauhaus, Police or whatever. When I read musical magazines (less and less I must say), I often notice a quite narrow attitude against “modern music”, like if nowadays there’s only shit released. I do like a lot of new songs, also Italian ones, including some tracks from Fedez or Olly. The algorithm is not my friend at all, and I’ll keep avoiding him/her/it, and so I avoid the radios, but some nice discovery might come out.”

Breathless – Compulsion

“Let’s go back again in a period that stays in the middle between the two above. I was, I think, 25, last year of the design studies at the university. I have been in touch with Anna Mioni for years, a girl in Padova (I was in Milan), through Rumore, a magazine. We exchanged cassettes of new wave and other stuff. She helped me in discovering Tuxedomoon, Cocteau Twins and God knows how many other bands. Not with mixtapes, but entire albums, dubbed and shipped. One of these was Chasing Promises, from Breathless. I didn’t know them at all, not even by name, but she thought I had to know them. 
The first track is Compulsion and it was an epiphany.
A few years afterwards, I fell in love with Silvia, a blonde girl that I met at a party. She had a boyfriend, a DJ actually, and her musical tastes were totally “normal”, really far from mine. But I was in love anyway and, in order to try to conquer her heart, I had the brilliant idea of, well, doing a mixtape. I don’t remember any other song I’ve put on that cassette, but for sure the opening was Compulsion. In my deranged mind, it was an universally romantic, moving, tender song full of beauty and love.
She disappeared. 
Ok, I can’t blame that musical choice for having put her away but, when I listen now to that song, with the (maybe boring) consciousness of a 50 years old man, I ask myself “How could I have thought she could fall in love with me with such a song?” But I still love it so much: it’s nearly 7 minutes of one of the most intense music you could ever find on earth.
Sometimes I still cannot believe that now I’m doing music with the man who sang that, and now even with the guitarist.
A couple of years ago, when Dominic was visiting me to do the final mix of this second album, I was cooking and I distractedly noticed that a beautiful sound was in the room. “Ah, ok, it’s Dominic speaking with Olivia” (my oldest daughter, she was 10 at the times). They were playing chess. I realised that his voice so so incredibly beautiful even when he speaks.
When Breathless toured in Italy, in 2023, I also met Gary, who is a wonderful person as well.
Sorry to sound like an infatuated fan, but, well, it’s what I’ve been for ages! And I still am.
Now it’s funny for me to consider Dominic as a distant friend, even more than a musical collaborator.”

There Will Be Fireworks is out now via Silentes. Look HERE for more information on Starlight Assembly.