Since debuting in 2015 with a breakout EP that won best electronic act, best single, best experimental act and breakthrough producer at the WAM Awards in Australia: KUČKA has become a songwriter for hire for some incredible names: from A$AP Rocky to Vince Staples to Kendrick Lamar toFlume to SOPHIE. But while these fragments offered great promise for KUČKA, it can often be hard to really hear the person underneath that cameo. On her solo full-length ‘Wrestling’ we hear what Laura Jane Lowther really offers: the realisation of years spent in serene studios stitching R&B, jazz, new age and electro influences into autobiographical stories for growth, love and journeying.

A true global citizen: KUČKA has moved around the world twice in her life. From Northern England as a kid, to Australia as a teen, to Los Angeles as an adult. Excelling in music early, she trained classical composition and followed her skill into late night demo-rooms with songwriters and rappers. Jump to 2021, and KUČKA is married and living in America with her wife (the performance artist and director Dillon Howl). Wrestling finds KUČKA truly secure in her career for the first time: with record labels LuckyMe and Soothsayer, and published by Haim’s executive producer Ariel Reichstadt. Laura lives near Fairfax in LA and runs a studio space with Dom Maker of Mount Kimbie. She is inspired by a thriving scene of contemporary and digital art in Los Angeles, and the landscape of independent music, radio stations and activism in the city. Committed to the power of music for learning, she’s mentoring young talent as an official Ableton instructor through lockdown. The pandemic has given her time and rare attention to her own record and forced her songwriting inward.

Wrestling is the result of a tough but fruitful transition in her life. And beside’s a handful of select additional-producers (her former composition tutor: Lee Buddle, Frank Ocean collaborator Vegyn and her support bubble buddy Flume), she is standing tall with a self-written, self-produced, self-recorded work that is timeless: songs spanning love to conflict, sexuality and maturity. The result is inherently futurist with the sheen of software interwoven with her immaculate voice. The elastic gloss of the album belies the hard-won experience of the woman who made it. Wrestling is the sound of someone cherishing their life, polishing their lessons into sophisticated modern pop. While the uninitiated can just stay for the hooks - Wrestling is both KUČKA’s record and KUČKA’s ‘record’. As KUCKA knows so well - pop is so often made by committee. Wrestling shows the power of the opposite.

← Back