Richard Green – Holey Shoes

Richard Green moves between worlds without announcing the shift. Italian by origin and now based in Milan, he spent eleven years in London earning a music degree and a higher guitar diploma. That period left more than technique. It left a clear view of a city that sells itself as one of Europe’s cultural capitals while carrying some of the highest poverty rates in the United Kingdom. From his first electronic experiments through a full neoclassical trilogy written for piano and string quartet with Irene Veneziano and Archimia, Green has treated style as a working method rather than a brand. Holey Shoes, released in December 2025, brings the guitar back to the centre and places that instrument inside a social frame.

Consider for a moment that a song can function like a pair of shoes already walked to the edge of collapse. The sole is gone in places. Water and grit get in. The wearer keeps moving because stopping is not an option. Green’s single operates on that principle. It takes the physical insistence of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik era, the interlocking bounce of bass and drums, the guitar that refuses to sit politely, and walks those sounds through a colder climate. The result is not tribute. It is abrasion.

The groove arrives fully formed and does not ask permission. Funk and indie rock sit inside a production tightened by modern electronic detail without losing the heat of instruments played by hand. The rhythm section locks into a pattern that feels lived-in rather than programmed. Over that foundation the guitar works with clear intention. Green has said the solo is among the strongest he has written. It does not arrive as decoration. It opens a space where the track’s underlying tension is allowed to speak without apology. The lines move with the kind of controlled force that comes from long practice rather than sudden inspiration. They carry the weight of the idea rather than simply illustrating it.

That idea is simple and difficult. Holey shoes stand for the people Green watched while living in London. The image is concrete. Worn leather, mud, the daily act of continuing. The song does not lecture. It sets a body in motion and then places an uncomfortable awareness inside the motion. You are invited to move with the groove while the title reminds you of those whose movement is only survival.

Green recorded the track over a year and a half in his home studio in Italy, handling almost every part himself with the help of a trusted sound engineer and graphic designer. The care shows in the balance between organic attack and electronic precision. Nothing is left loose. At the same time the production never sands away the human irregularities that give the performance its presence. The result sits at a useful distance from both pure nostalgia and pure contemporaneity. It belongs to the lineage of bands who understood funk as physical language, yet it speaks with the vocabulary of an artist who has already tested several other languages and returned with something specific to say.

What remains after the final notes is the sense of an artist who treats versatility not as a marketing claim but as a working method. Holey Shoes does not resolve the contradiction it names. It simply refuses to look away while the body keeps time. That refusal is the track’s real weight.

Follow Richard Green

Holey Shoes is out now.

Listen: Spotify · SoundCloud

Follow: Instagram · Linktree