DUCKY

As befits a young, insatiable musical mind, the output of Morgan Neiman as Ducky escapes any easy attempts at categorization besides "electronic." She's got wise-beyond-her-years, electro-pop songs; she's got a series of what she calls "Rave Toolz"; and on her new three-song Lost Angeles EP, ostensibly a marker of the former NYU student moving to the city of lights, she delights in a kind of post-Four Tet techno. "Rain Dance" is built on a looping five-note melodic line, its mild harmonic deviations, and Ducky's voice repeating an unintelligible phrase (phased and echoed at a variety of speeds), all percolating at a 126bpm jack. It's simple fare, bright and florescent, the product of an over-stickered laptop playing with forms because the software and the knowledge are there. But it ultimately wins because it is emotionally present and wonderfully reserved, when it has no need to be. Watching Ducky's space from here on in. - NPR Music

Our #WCW this week goes by the name, Ducky. Born Morgan Neiman, she is an exciting producer and DJ based in Los Angeles. She has been making music under the Ducky alias since 2006 and has started to really blow up recently. Only two weeks in to 2016 and she has already released three tracks!



One of the reasons 2015 was so big for Ducky was due to her affiliation with and the rise of the nightcore movement. Th engagement and amount of incredibly enthusiastic fans in that whole Soundcloud scene is amazing. Ducky is one of the most talked about names in that world and definitely one of the leading females.



Ducky was everywhere last year, she put out an EP on Nest HQ, a label co-founded by Fan Fiction, another nightcore heavyweight. She also started her Rave Toolz project. This is probably the biggest reason Ducky was so talked about last year. Every friday for twenty weeks now, Ducky has uploaded a new ‘Rave Tool’, essentially she will take a song, new or old, and turn it into a hyper rave track, sending Soundcloud into a frenzy.



On top of releasing ‘Rave Tool 19’ and ‘Rave Tool 20’ already this year, Ducky had the first release of the Activia Benz label for 2016. Pushing boundaries as usual, the track called ‘SPLITS’, is basically a huge build to an anti drop. Something we are starting to see people experiment with a lot more and something Ducky can do so well.



Ducky has been quite vocal online about the fact that she is making her own music and isn’t being “ghost produced” by a male. She once sarcastically tweeted saying, “he’s only on stage cause he’s cute, I wonder which girl ghost produces his shit”. Her social media bio’s also say “YES I MADE IT”. This is one of the biggest issues female producers face and a frustratingly common thing to hear.



Ducky is representing women in nightcore and is a strong model for innovation in music in general. Both with her originals and Rave Toolz edits, she is someone to follow closely this year and someone who will inspire others to follow her lead. - NLV Records

LA producer DUCKY made the rounds in 2015 releasing tracks on Hot Mom USA, B.YRSELF Division, and here, NEST HQ, but now she’s leading the new year with the first Activia Benz release of 2016 on their illustrious Singles Club series. If the explosive cover art wasn’t a good enough indication, “SPLIT” is a fireball of energy that pummels the listener. Deceptively serene chimes invite you into a crystalline palace of old-school rave feels before it all comes crashing down with a drop that sounds like a rocket blasting off. Intense, high-octane, and absolutely destructive, “SPLIT” is a track that tests the structural integrity of your room, the club, and speakers all across the globe. You have been warned. - NEST HQ

Ducky, "Rain Dance"
Incredible bit of straight-ahead house pop made from a bunch of pieces better-suited to shinier, brighter and god-awfully louder dance music. It's the mature calm here that makes this explode when it does. - NPR MUSIC

If you asked me what I wanted to be in 8th grade, I would have enthusiastically answered “Scientist!” Thanks to a class project, LA’s Morgan Neiman, known as DUCKY, would have answered “Musician!” and that’s exactly what she did. After dropping out of high school at age 17, she earned her BFA in recorded music at NYU, going on to cultivate a multitude of musical projects. Amongst those projects are a co-hosted radio show, a throng of music ranging from house to footwork, and RAVE TOOLZ, her weekly free download series.

As if charting on MySpace for electronic music at the age of 13 and DJing “electro bangers” at 14 doesn’t sound interesting enough, she learned basic html and css when she was only eight years old and has worked as a developer for the last two years. What makes DUCKY such a standout artist is not her lengthy history as a musician, but her math-driven mind and love of abstract exploration into concepts less-gifted artists can’t even dream of. - NEST HQ

"All we do is eat, sleep, fuck, repeat," sing-speaks Ducky on "Mickey and Mallory"—the opening cut from You on Top EP, premiering below. You know what's she's talking about. It's that routine you fall into when you've just started seeing someone and all you wanna do is devour them. Black out the windows, forget your friends, Seamless is your only communication with the outside world. Hey, it happens—if you're lucky—and eventually you emerge blinking into the light. Ducky knows. At least that's what I'm getting from this song.

"I’d met this guy in Berlin—his best friend is a good friend of mine, and introduced us, and I ended up ditching everyone and spending this amazing three days with him," recalls the San Francisco-born singer. "Like, I let my phone die and had to bang on the door of my friend’s apartment to get my suitcase on the way to the airport. We stayed in touch, and a few months later I posted something on Facebook about how I wanted to drive my high school car from San Francisco to New York, where I lived, asking if anyone wanted to go on a road trip. He told me he’d come with me. It was his first time in America ever. He flew to San Francisco and we spent ten days together, driving across the USA, sleeping in cheap motels, falling in love. Everybody thought we were crazy for going on this trip, barely knowing each other, but it was perfect.

"After he left, I wanted to capture the feeling of that time together. That’s where "Mickey and Mallory" ame from—it was something for myself, to play back and feel like my feet were up on the dash of my car, the two of us driving through Nebraska, looking for a Super 8 Motel and talking about whatever. The freshness of falling in love, but also the blissful comfort in finding a ride or die partner. And, of course, the names and a lot of the imagery are from Natural Born Killers. It’s that Bonnie and Clyde type of romance, partner in crime shit. You know."

I do know, Ducky. What a sick story. Musically it's a super-chill, weird-wonderful pop, full of unexpected grooves, interstellar bleeps and Ducky's (seemingly) horizontally delivered flow. From the eerie, minimalist coo of "22," to the deconstructed, cut and paste club-pop of "Hands Up," to the B-more club bounce of standout track "I'm Not a Player But…" this 22 year old is riding her own wave.

According to Ducky a.k.a. Morgan Neiman, this EP is a sweet first taste to sample her stuff, but it's also just the first bite. She's got a remix and collaboration coming out on Knightwerk Records, and a whole other EP on deck which she describes as "ethereal and floaty," swerving from the left into a more mainstream pop lane. Oh and she's also writing a record that's more (Pro)-tooled for the club. Sounds like she's doing everything but having time for the eat-sleep-fuck-repeat bliss cycle.

"I think I’ve managed to carve out a sound that is distinctly mine, and I’m really proud of that," she explains of You on Top. "If anything, the increasing variety in my production is a product of that comfort, of feeling like I know what makes a song my own. I can write a club track, and I can write a pop song, and I can write something weird and broken and downtempo, and they all sound like me. It’s a wonderful feeling, and something I’ve wanted from my art for a really long time."

And if this EP was a movie? It'd be "a lo-fi, slightly surreal cult film."

Ducky adds: "Like, a story of young love and drugs shot in the summer on Super 8, but the sex scenes aren’t simulated, and you can tell the director loves Jodorowsky.

Nuff said. - Noisey

Los Angeles-based DJ/producer Ducky has shared a new music video for her song “Bliss.” Directed by Alex Girav and Ross Constable, the open-ended clip follows two white-clad girls as they wordlessly make their way through an urban environment and into a forest. “Bliss” is taken from Ducky’s Don’t Give Up Yet, out August 12 on Ryan Hemsworth’s Secret Songs label. Watch the video below. - Pitchfork

After dropping the Lost Angeles EP on Skrillex's NEST imprint back in October, producer/singer Ducky has shared the video for "Winter Song." Directed by Quinn Tucker, the clip sees the artist setting out across town to uncover the secrets of an old map. Before arriving at her final, magical destination, she dances poolside with models, swipes a decorative fox off a bench, and follows a string of christmas lights into a wintry paradise. Watch the clip below. - Pitchfork