A few months after the release of the album Riflesso, published on 2 December 2025 by Karma Field Records, Willy Wonka Was Weird presents the official video clip of “Understairs“.
The song features the participation of Tommaso Mantelliauthor of the bass and drum parts, while Paolo Modolofounder of Karma Field Records and soul of the Willy Wonka Was Weird project, signs guitars, vocals and composition.
With this video clip, Willy Wonka Was Weird completes the journey begun with Reflexentrusting Sottoscala with the task of symbolically closing an artistic and personal chapter.
The song was born after an event that profoundly marked the life of the author and his family, starting a long journey of personal rebirth. In that period, the memory of the basement of his childhood home resurfaced, a place perceived as refuge, protection and silence. The song takes shape from that image.
Understairs go through the pain without stopping at it. The first part tells of fragility, the sense of loss and the difficulty of living with one's limits; the second instead opens a window towards hope, awareness and the possibility of transforming suffering into growth. A path that also reflects the spiritual experience of the author, whose Buddhist practice represented a fundamental support in finding balance and a new perspective.
The transformation told by Understairs it also emerges through two verses that return throughout the song. The first, “And you are all that I have”, comes from the rediscovery of the value of those who continue to remain next to us even when pain risks taking over. The second, “The anxiety I have and the harm it causes will help”, instead represents the moment in which suffering stops being just a wound and becomes a possibility for change. Two sentences that contain the entire meaning of the song: from the acceptance of fragility to the conscious choice to transform it in a new direction.
Personally made by Paolo Modolo several months ago, the video clip translates this inner journey through symbolic and deeply autobiographical images, leaving the viewer the freedom to interpret them and find, in them, a part of their own story.
The publication of the video comes a few days after the first anniversary of Karma Field Records and coincides with a period of profound change in the author's life, both on a personal and artistic level.
For this reason, Sottoscala represents not only the ideal conclusion of the journey Reflexbut also the beginning of a new creative phase.
Regarding the meaning of the song, Paolo Modolo says:
“For a long time I thought that pain was just something to fight or to use as simple artistic inspiration. Today, however, I believe that it can become a master. If you find the courage to go through it, it does not show you who you are, but who you can become. Pain does not erase hope: often it is precisely what dissolves the clouds that cover the mind, the heart and the direction we want to follow.”
With Sottoscala and the album Riflesso, Willy Wonka Was Weird delivers to the public a work that not only tells of a wound, but the possibility of crossing it and transforming it into awareness. A video clip that symbolically closes the journey of Riflesso and opens, at the same time, a new human and artistic season.
Willy Wonka Was Weird
Willy Wonka Was Weird is the solo project of Paolo Modolofounder of Karma Field Recordsformerly a member of the In My Juneof the
Anarchists and author of the collection of poems “That breath between anarchy and Buddhism”.
In October 2019 he released the debut album 022016032019 for (R)esisto
Distribution, recorded and produced by Tommaso Mantelli at Lesder Studio in Treviso.
The work receives wide acclaim from the specialized press and leads to the release of the singles
March 2019 and Muro Di Tempo (Anarchici Della Pulizia), followed by live concerts and
streaming performances during the pandemic, including for MEI-related events.
In September 2020 he recorded the cover Lisa is 16 years old (by Sick Tamburo) for the
compilation Parlami Per Semper, in memory of Elisabetta Imelio.
In October of the same year he joined the Natural Head Quarter Studio in Ferrara for
record Let's leave nothingness for this infinite, produced by Michele Guberti and
Massaga Produzioni, preceded by the singles Di(o)dio and Cala la nebbia a Sedriano e
published October 29, 2021.
December 2, 2025 marks the release of Riflesso, the new album by Willy Wonka Was Weird and the first chapter of the collaboration with Karma Field Records, preceded by the single of the same name in radio rotation from November 6, 2025.
A record that was not created to satisfy the rush of the world, but to honestly tell the change of an artist and a man.
CONTACTS
KARMA FIELD RECORDS
https://linktr.ee/Karmafieldrecords
http://www.karmafieldrecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Karmafieldrecords
https://www.instagram.com/karmafieldrecords
WILLY WONKA WAS WEIRD
Facebook: facebook.com/willywonkawasweird
Instagram: instagram.com/willy_wonka_was_weird
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
