{"id":1706,"date":"2022-06-29T01:48:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T01:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aportaltothenordics.com\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2022-06-29T01:48:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T01:48:14","slug":"interview-kuhu-by-your-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/29\/interview-kuhu-by-your-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: ku:hu &#8211; by your side"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Combining elements of lo-fi with R&amp;B and neo-soul to create a unique soundscape, queer and non-binary musician ku:hu tells her own story of heartbreak &amp; finding their own identity in the world we live in.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/aportaltothenordics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/ku.hu__134115374_3022224868063744_9042052833418323773_n-819x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1708\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hi ku:hu, how are you today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Hey! I&#8217;m doing really well, thank you. I hope you are as well \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For those that haven&#8217;t heard of you yet, how would you best describe your sound,<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>and who have been your biggest influences so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My sound is definitely nostalgic, atmospheric &amp; ethereal. Those are the three words I would use to describe it. My music is a vessel for me to tell my own story of heartbreak and finding myself.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My influences stem from pretty much anywhere, I have a pretty broad music taste; I think this comes from moving around so much growing up and encountering so many different genres of music.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>But I would say, musically, my biggest influences stem from 80s &amp; 90s R&amp;B music; artists like Sad\u00e9, TLC, Toni Braxton &amp; Aaliyah really shaped my childhood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do you remember what the first song was that made you want to start a career in<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I grew up playing the piano and was heavily into music as a kid, but I didn&#8217;t have a desire particularly to write and create my own music, I just wanted to play.<br>However, there are technically two songs that made me want to create! One of the first songs was &#8216;Michicant&#8217; by Bon Iver. I was like 13 when I discovered this song. There was something so deceivingly simple and profound about that song that really stuck with me and gave me such chills. But I didn&#8217;t really think anything about creating music, I saw creating as kind of a pipe dream that would never come to fruition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It wasn&#8217;t until, many years later, I discovered The Internet and the song &#8216;Girl&#8217; which they collaborated on with Kaytranada. I delved deeper into both The Internet &amp; Kaytranada&#8217;s discographies and was like: Okay, this. This is the kind of music I want to create.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You have just released your new single &#8216;by your side&#8217;. Can you tell us how<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>that track came about?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The story of how this came about is actually rather beautiful. This is actually the first song I&#8217;ve ever written.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I was at Berklee College of Music studying for my masters degree during the pandemic and I had an assignment for production class which involved sending in a demo of a song you&#8217;re working on. At the time I only had a chord sequence in mind that I would play over and over on the keyboard in my apartment but I didn&#8217;t know where I could possibly fit it so that it would work in a song. One night, I sat down and started using my keyboard as a drum, programmed it into Logic Pro and that&#8217;s how the beat began. I sent in that demo version to my production class without any lyrics because I thought I could work on that during the main recording assignment. However, my teacher told me I needed lyrics (or even a melody) in order for it to count as a demo and this is where I was panicking because I only had 2 days to send in lyrics alongside this (very rough) beat I had made.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Thanks to some friends around me, I was given the number of wroi, a fellow student at Berklee (and now someone who&#8217;s a dear friend), who I had never even met at that point and I decided to contact him to see if he was up for collaborating with me on it. He ended up writing the lyrics and recording the vocals on a rainy night before the demo assignment was due in (ironically the same night I had recorded the rain sound to add into the song later on) and that&#8217;s how the track came about.&nbsp;<br>We added some extra flair to it thanks to some great friends to make it the track that it is now!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: by your side\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/3VWITqBvY5xL1WCj9k1zkF?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And is there a story behind it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Simply put, the song talks about a toxic relationship, that you know should end. You aren&#8217;t happy, you can see your person isn&#8217;t happy. But you can&#8217;t help but reminisce on the good moments and cherish those rather than think about the toxic side of things. It definitely resonates to a period in my life haha<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Can we expect a new EP or even an album from you in the near future?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>So this song is actually part of a bigger project that I am currently working on at the moment titled &#8216;The Long Weekend&#8217;. Basically the EP is a story told through song and this is the final song on the EP. So we wait and see what pieces of the puzzle will fit next&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The coronavirus outbreak has obviously affected everyone&#8217;s plans, but what<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>have you got in store for the rest of the year?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I am going to rest a little bit because the last year has been hectic to say the least, with finishing my masters and finishing this song! I will definitely be getting back into writing more music again and finishing this EP properly.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And finally, what is the best piece of musical advice you have ever been given?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>One of the best (albeit probably very simple) pieces of advice I was ever given was to not let fear get in the way of creating music, let it fuel you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: ku:hu\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/artist\/2uDptez0i0btN3MCyCkYZ1?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Combining elements of lo-fi with R&amp;B and neo-soul to create a unique soundscape, queer and non-binary musician ku:hu tells her own story of heartbreak &amp; finding their own identity in the world we live in. Hi ku:hu, how are you today? Hey! I&#8217;m doing really well, thank you. I hope you are as well \ud83d\ude42 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discover"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nightshiftblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}