Volk Soup: 10p Jazz
(Merciless Nature Information)
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Volk Soup convey eclectic, brass-infused post-punk thrills with their debut album, 10p Jazz. Andy Brown evaluations for Louder Than Battle.
Rising round 2020, Volk Soup instantly proceeded to unleash a sequence of enigmatic and delightfully deranged singles. Songs about glassy-eyed billionaires and repulsive royalty delivered by three virile younger males with a penchant for post-punk. Increasing their sonic palette with every launch, the Leeds-based band proudly declared that they’d, “by no means sound the identical twice.” Whereas growing a recognisable type, you’ll be able to hear that push and pull within the music; that innate stress that invariably leads us someplace new.
10p Jazz threatens to convey a bit coherence to the chaos however relaxation assured, they continue to be a reassuringly full of life bunch. Bastard delivers an unexpectedly subdued introduction and sounds prefer it’s crawled from the imagined swamplands of West Yorkshire. The Birthday Get together minus the bats and Outdated Testomony hang-ups. The track begins with singer Harry Jones seemingly trapped in some darkish, dank cellar accompanied by a piano and the unmistakable stench of claustrophobia. Seconds later, this murky malaise is rudely interrupted by a flurry of marching drums, frenzied brass and gloriously twisted noise.
Whereas the band started life as a three-piece, their debut album sees them increase to eight musicians and make use of a powerful plethora of instrumentation. Sax, trumpet, cello, accordion, glockenspiel, lap metal, piano, synth and singing noticed gleefully collide with bass, drums and guitar. Oh, and there’s even a bit bit of electrical drill for all you industrial purists. That is the Volk Soup you maybe know and rightly love but they’ve advanced and grown right into a many-headed post-punk beast.
Reptilian Mind finds the band providing up one thing comparatively simple but admirably relentless. When the sax kicks in, you might very nicely end up flailing round like an over-excited Kermit the Frog. I do know I did. Professionalism Debunked arrives subsequent with some barely feral, ridiculously excitable backing vocals. To my ears, they sound like a gang of rowdy pirates on shore depart. Remarkably, they’ve managed to seize the spontaneous spirit and frantic power of their dwell – quickly to be legendary – performances.
Mates slows issues down and adopts a jazzy, supremely sleazy barroom swing. “Properly, I’ve received buddies and it’s not exhausting to get on” swoons Jones as he slips and slides by means of the track, “However nobody comprehends that quickly, sooner or later, all of this might be gone.” The singer totally embracing his position as post-punk lounge singer come barstool doomsayer. The band lean into their love of brass all through the file: from the filthy jazz vibes on Mates to the intense trumpet strains of Holy Constructing Vacationer. The latter is a brief, sprightly and optimistic little quantity that jogs my memory of prime Julian Cope.
Mass Village Angst ramps up the madness as soon as extra because it begins up with a manic, barely garbled chant. What follows feels joyously unhinged. Ryan Walker’s bass racing by means of the guts of the observe as every thing continues to escalate and finally unravel. Nothing In Tomorrow is euphoric, kinda catchy and fully unafraid to fall into brass-filled insanity at a second’s discover. Exhilarating stuff. One factor’s for sure; the entire album goes to be an absolute blast once they play it dwell.
In addition to being one of many extra attention-grabbing track titles, Spellbound By The Phallus additionally occurs to be the eight-minute pièce de resistance of the whole album. Jones barks, croons and intones his approach by means of the bands irresistibly funky and wild propulsion. When he barks “spellbound” I can virtually see a younger Mr. Nick Cave (nicely earlier than his royal coronation attending days). It’s a cathartic, shamanistic magic spell of a track. The ultimate observe, Meet Me By The Willow, catches me fully off guard with a haunting – barely folky – dreamlike drift into the abyss. Stunning however unsettling, simply how I prefer it.
With 10p Jazz the band have managed to efficiently cling on to the thrilling chaos and eclectic spirit of their early singles whereas making a debut album that feels satisfyingly cohesive. The power that some bands appear to battle to precisely seize within the studio definitely hasn’t been a difficulty right here both. It’s the following neatest thing to having the band play in your entrance room (and marginally much less prone to result in damaged furnishings). 10p Jazz has sonic hyperlinks to everybody from The Pop Group and This Warmth to The 80’s Matchbox B-Line Catastrophe but it stays an undeniably distinctive and impressively impassioned piece of labor.
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Volk Soup might be discovered on Bandcamp, Fb and Instagram.
All phrases by Andy Brown. You possibly can go to his creator profile and browse extra of his evaluations for Louder Than Battle right here.
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