Written whilst on his travels with minimal equipment, Manchester-based talent KUBA’s ‘NY2003’ is an impressive testament to his artistic capability whilst being restricted to the capable studio setup that his other productions were born from. Inspired by early ‘00s Deep House-laced with melodic potency and melancholic vocal toplines.

Centered around a captivating topline tied to the feeling of “forgetting, pushing away, avoiding – the temporary, pleasant side of that,” ‘NY2003’ is a myriad of deepened tones, elegant cadence, and gentle club energy from start to finish. What a superb release for this young talented producer and singer. 

Words and photos by Kuba

Kuba cc Jan Petr

Kuba cc Jan Petr

Korg Minilogue XD

This is my go-to synth at the moment, I’m on the move a lot and this one actually fits into a carry-on which is a major advantage for me. It still takes up about half of my suitcase but is well worth the compromise. I use it a lot for plucks, arpeggios, synth stabs, and generally more rhythmical stuff. In ‘NY2003’ it’s the little rhythmical keys and synth ear-candy. The sound feels rich but depending on the setting often comes with a lot of low mid resonances so there’s quite a bit of cleaning up I have to do with EQs, Soothe2 is especially great at controlling those low mids in synths. Also, when the filter opens up and you get these sharp frequencies, Soothe can really iron that out which makes it sound overall more balanced and natural when you then feed it into a compressor.



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