From England to Perth traveled one young talented being, and under the hot Western Australian sun Kucka was born. With her rep as a talented producer on the rise, she has collaborated with the likes of A$AP Rocky and is now poised to release her new EP Unconditional.
HAPPY: This new release, is it an EP or an album?
KUCKA: Yeah I mean I guess it’s an EP but its 7 tracks which is pretty long for an EP.
HAPPY: You’ve spent a lot of your time collaborating so I guess the next step was always to make something purely solo right?
KUCKA: Yeah I guess so, I started off by just producing my own stuff in the early days putting stuff up on SoundCloud and other artists being like “Oh we are looking for a vocalist” and that kind of thing,
HAPPY: In terms of collaboration when you collaborate with Paces and Cosmos Midnight etc, do you pitch in only on vocals or beats too?
KUCKA: With those guys they both sent me tracks and wanted me to write the lyrics. So yeah both of those guys did all the production and made it way less pressure on me.
HAPPY: And times you’ve had musical control over songs, do you like that? Or just prefer to work out the vocal stuff?
KUCKA: Well Infinity from the EP I produced on that, it started off from James Ireland and he’s a producer from Perth, he sent me a minutes’ worth of different samples and said “I’ve been writing something with your vocals in mind“, he sent me the Abelton session and I just arranged some stuff and added synths and had my input in that one but yeah still a collaboration and that was really good; texturally a sound I love to work with, it was really cool he thought of me during his session.
HAPPY: Cool. So to your musical background growing up did you ever do piano or sing or anything?
KUCKA: Not really, I had piano lessons as a kid but it didn’t get very far, I’m not good at practicing or being structured at music, I’ve always been interested in music and enjoyed it a lot, hence why I started writing, but I didn’t really get back into it until I was probably 16/17 when I moved to Perth and made musical friends.
HAPPY: Where are you from originally?
KUCKA: England, I moved over and met a couple of girls and one of them played guitar and made me learn a Nirvana and a Neil Young track on bass so I could play along with her.
HAPPY: Working with A$AP Rocky must have been pretty big?
KUCKA: It was pretty crazy, for his single for his previous album he sampled one of my tracks from my EP and then got me to sing on a couple of his tracks which is pretty cool. When I got the call up, I thought I was getting punked.
HAPPY: What would be a career highlight for you?
KUCKA: We just played a show in Melbourne that was really fun, when I play live I play with two other people, Jake and Katie who both produce their own stuff, and I guess the most fun is touring and rehearsing with both of those guys they are so fun and awesome and talented and its probably my favourite part of the project.
HAPPY: And how was recording in New Zealand?
KUCKA: Oh yeah it was great, more just hanging out and going for walks being inspired, it’s so nice, everything looks really good. I’ve only been to the North island so far, but the South island is like even better apparently.
HAPPY: Okay fun time, favourite food?
KUCKA: It changes all the time, at the moment I’m obsessed with having oats for breakfast with berries, it’s like “Where have you been all my life?!” Just breakfast food in general.
HAPPY: Yeah oats are like 80 cents for about 15 breakfasts.
KUCKA: And when you are poor you don’t need to eat till dinner.
HAPPY: Do you have any pets?
KUCKA: We have a dog called Circuit Board and he’s really cute and huge.
HAPPY: I’m sure everyone is loving this vital information we’re getting out of you right now, but I’m gonna wrap it up. Thank you for chatting with us!
KUCKA: Thanks so much.
