GAUCI, Photograph: Elliott Lauren-Ryan (Supplied)
GAUCI’s debut mixtape, Growing Pains, incorporates elements of disco, hip hop, hyperpop and indie rock. The trio’s earlier releases centred on electronic production, but Growing Pains adds acoustic drums to the mix and places more emphasis on electric guitars.
GAUCI is the project of vocalist Antonia Gauci, guitarist David Gauci and bass player Felix Lush, and all three contributed to the mixtape’s songwriting and production. Lyrically, Growing Pains interrogates emotional distress and relational complexities, while foregrounding accessible pop melodies.
Check Check catches up with GAUCI to learn more about the mixtape, their attitude to genre and the crucial role songwriting plays in the band members’ personal lives.
Check Check: Is the combination of live instrumentation and electronics an essential part of the GAUCI DNA? Do you spend much time thinking about how to balance these components?
GAUCI: Yeah, it has always been such a huge part of making music for us – melding the electronic and live world together. On our earlier material, we kept it mostly electronic and had guitars featured alongside vocals, but on Growing Pains, we weren’t afraid to tip the scales in the other direction and have produced something that was written and fleshed out on live instrumentation.
Live drums on this record was a huge step for us. It’s something we hadn’t tried before in GAUCI but it just fit the songs we were writing and kinda shaped the more guitar-forward approach to this record.
Do you have a consensus understanding what a GAUCI song sounds like? Are there any boundaries in terms of genre?
Yes and no, really. We’ve broken the mould when it comes to writing a GAUCI song in the past few years, but there’s always going to be some kind of backbone, base-level things that define what our sound is. As for genre boundaries, we threw the rulebook away during writing for Growing Pains. We dipped our toes in everything from disco to trap to indie rock and pop, and it all felt authentic to us.
We think you shouldn’t ever feel afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and try something different. We surprised ourselves so much by trying absolutely anything and everything.
Tell us about the themes explored on Growing Pains. How meaningful has writing these songs been for navigating certain psychological or relational growing pains?
This is a mixtape centred on growing up and living through your 20s and 30s, a soundtrack to the anything and everything that can and most definitely will happen. Loving, losing, fighting and cruising. We didn’t set out with any expectations of what was going to define the themes, they kinda just came out like that.
The songs have been so helpful to open some doors around processing certain feelings and defining relationships. It sometimes feels like the answer to a lot of life stuff is buried within the four walls of this mixtape for us – things you didn’t even know were answerable or comparable to your own life until you actually sit down and listen to it front to back. It’s definitely our most “mature” work so far.
GAUCI - "Growing Up"
Catch GAUCI at The Lansdowne, Sydney, on Sat May 11. Follow GAUCI here
