STOKA

A bone-thumping mix of reggae-rock, blues grunge and sick twists of dub-beats, STOKA is bursting tastebuds with their salty-chicken flavour, and tearing into the Melbourne music scene. We chat to vocalist/guitarist Az.
Hey guys, thanks for chatting to Forte. First off, can you tell us about yourselves and how the band came to be?
STOKA has been around on the Melb scene for a little over a year now. We started off as just a bedroom project and ended up chucking a few gigs in our living room and backyard, but we realised we wanted to do this on big stages ASAP so we’ve been hustling out tunes ever since and trying to build a good following.

We had a listen to your new single ‘Come Alive’ which has a very Byron Bay, chilled out, reggae sound. Who or what are some of your influences?
Bootleg Rascal and Lyall Moloney are definitely some of our biggest modern influences.

You’ve previously recorded your debut EP alongside industry professional, singer/MC/producer/DJ from Sydney, Lyall Moloney, how was that whole process? Can you describe the EP?
The EP came out very different, with a lot of different flavours. There’s a trap song, a reggae song and like a punky song and the whole process was awesome because we got to live with Lyall in Manly for a week which is just a gorgeous area. We’d wake up and get coffee on the beach, then head over to the studio and spend 16 hours making the EP. It was sick because Lyall has a very unique way of approaching things so it was cool to work with such a mystical dude.
Tell us, you guys describe yourselves as ‘bursting tastebuds with their salty-chicken flavour’, is there a story behind the salty reference?
We always go to this Asian joint and get chicken ribs with spicy salt on rice for dinner. It’s number 59 on the menu at All Season Dumpling.
If you could share the stage with one other band, who would that be?
Dear Seattle, they fk shit up man.

Thanks for taking the time to chat today, anything else you’d like to add?
In January we’ll be recording again and we’re going to do it differently to the first – it’s going to be a much more garagey sound and we can’t wait to get some more tunes out for our people.
Their single ‘Come Alive’ is available now on Spotify.