Introducing #220 - Volk Soup
Let us introduce you to Leeds/Manchester based post-punk trio Volk Soup - who have just released their debut track ‘Billionaire’.
Rearing their snarling heads, Volk Soup seek to put themselves securely on the map beginning in the fertile land of the North of England, making good use of the venues and populated post-punk scene at their disposal. Having played a handful of support shows for some of the UK’s post-punk household names such as Mush, Mister Strange and Cassels, Volk Soup turned to recording a host of their experimental numbers. With a variety of raw and fleshy ideas under their belts, the first grotesque installment to their repertoire will now manifest as “Billionaire”, (fit with its hunched over henchman “I Shot Him and I Ran” on side ‘B’) gets them underway.
Having formed with a different drummer just before the pandemic in late 2019, Harry Jones and Ryan Walker’s original lineup underwent a small change of the utmost importance that saw Luc Gibbons replace their original skinsman. Their Bandcamp demo, “Rosemary”, piqued Gibbons’ interest and on they went to write, record and perform all new pieces composed both pre and post the lineup change.
With a collective interest in post-punk and mutual tastes in more niche genres such as no-wave, the band ventured towards a more specific sound, in the same ilk as Fat White Family, The Fall, Country Teasers, Talking Heads, The Contortions, Suicide and much more.
“Billionaire” centres around themes of “resisting the luxuries sold to us by capital’s image” in Jones’ own words. Texturally the song welds together explosive bass lines supported by an infrastructure of equally booming tom-based drum grooves, over which dissonant guitar riffs screech and dystopian lyrics are frantically set forth. The intermittent samples of whip-cracks draw a comparison between the despair of living up to the corporate elites’ “work hard” ethic to achieve wealth and the effect on one’s mental health this can have; feeling enslaved by this consensus. Volk Soup’s message is far from complete as they are armed to the teeth with an arsenal of equally as poignant and seemingly more volatile strings to their bow. Spanning an assortment of genres in forthcoming releases, the trio anticipate drawing more attention in their near-future endeavours taking influence from country, avant-garde and even dance music.
They took a moment to talk to us about their music.
Hey there - how are you? So where does a name like Volk Soup come from?
From our inception, until the release of our first demo, we were actually called People Soup. But a very small bit of research showed that there was in fact another band by that name. So we took the typical leftist approach and made it German, or at least part German. The idea around the name, for me, was about conjuring up these communistic/ socialistic images, some kind of pre-WWII call to arms. It has to be ‘people’ rather than ‘human’ because of the more proletariat connotations of the word. We’re all human, Jeff Bezos is a human, but he’s not one of the people. It was that idea alongside a grubby, tactile idea of a soup of people, like some dirty bath water in a shared bathhouse or something. All that and I'm just really into soup.
So your debut track ‘Billionaire’ is out now - can you tell us what it is about?
I don’t think it’s a particularly subtle song. There’s some irony in there but it’s about how being a billionaire means you’re inherently a bastard. We’d all like a little extra cash, after all, we’ve gotta pay these energy bills AND I simply wanna be able to afford a packet of biscuits whenever I please, but I don’t want so much money that it compromises everything I believe in. The general tone to the song is one of bitterness, but towards the personalities of the likes of Bezos and Musk, not about the money. I really think I just want them to suffer.
Where are you from and what are your favorite things to do there?
We’re all actually from different places. Bolton, The Black Country, Portsmouth, but we’re a Leeds band. Though Ryan, our bassist, is based in Manchester. For me Leeds is one of, if not the best city in England. Unfortunately not operating in full capacity at the moment but Hyde Park Picture House is the city’s best place for cinephiles. I will on a semi-regular basis go to the whole foods shop ‘Out of This World’ to indulge in a vegan vanilla slice, the best piece of vegan pastry in the city. Wharf Chambers, Hyde Park Book Club and New Headingley Club some of the best places to get a drink and watch a gig in the city. Big shout out to Mabgate Bleach, a gig venue, who’re putting on some of the best shows and creating the best scene currently operating in Leeds. I could write an essay praising what Leeds has to offer.
What are the key influences when it comes to your music?
My biggest personal influence is Fat White Family. A band I stumbled on when I was 19 and have followed borderline religiously since attending the most formative gig of my life in Birmingham. All the other bands that have rubbed off on me and given me my rather haphazard style of writing: The Fall, Country Teasers, The Monks, are all bands I’ve been turned on to through Fat Whites. We all come from slightly different places but DNA, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Joy Division, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Suicide, The Cramps, Buzzcocks are the common ground we’ve found. I also wanna channel some country and disco stuff at some point. I love Tammy Wynette, Kenny Rogers, Townes van Zandt but also Bee Gees, Hot Chocolate, ABBA, Divine, so eventually you’ll be able to hear that in Volk Soup.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to your music before?
I honestly try to avoid this. It’s a journalist's job. I feel very dirty trying to sell us like a product. Some artists try to come up with these very superlative, hyphenated descriptions like “post-Corbyn disco-cowboy kraut-grunge” or some nonsense. I guess just listen to Billionaire, it’s obviously punk of some sort, call it what you want. Call it shit if that’s what you think it is.
Now the track is out there, what next for you?
Gonna play live as much as we can. Would very much like to be headlining gigs come this time next year but time will tell. We’ve got more singles lined up for the next couple of months, hopefully people like them and give us money to do it more often. If you give us the money we’ll have an album by the end of next year. We work quickly, so hopefully we can bear fruit.
