Volk Soup share new single, "Friends" .. Debut album out 3rd October
Debut album from new Leeds post-punk/free jazz six-piece, FFO The Birthday Party, Fat White Family
Volk Soup
Share "Friends" Single - Listen here
Debut album, 10p Jazz
Due 3rd October via Dipterid Records / Cruel Nature
Live Dates In UK, France and Belgium
Threading wiry post-punk, dissonant noise and bursts of free-jazz intensity, new Leeds' six-piece Volk Soup will release their debut album, 10p Jazz on 3rd October via Dipterid Records (digital and vinyl) and Cruel Nature (cassette).
Today Volk Soup shares new single "Friends", along with a frenzied live session recorded at Cafe Etch in Middlesbrough. Catch them in action at their album release show in Leeds on 3rd Oct before they head to France and Belgium (full info/live dates below..).
Vocalist/guitarist Harry Jones says of "Friends": "A song written in a time between friendship. A time when I had drifted from the friends of my youth and had yet to meet the people I call my friends today. It was a bitter and resentful time. A time when a kindred spirit was hitherto unseen. These were the lonely years when I had few to share ideas with. Now I have too many and the song rings slightly false.
"The opening verse possesses some paraphrasing from a quote in Jacques Tourneur 1946 film Canyon Passage. The misanthropy and pessimism with which the quote is laced really chimed with me at the time. I think I’m a little less doom-laden now than I was then. That said, I do still feel that it is of some importance to surround yourself with people whose faces you’d like to see when the ship goes down. Perhaps the sexiest song on the record?"
Listen: Volk Soup - "Friends"
https://orcd.co/j3on0q8
Watch Volk Soup in Session at Cafe Etch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPhyMM0ZmO4
Recorded by Mozzenjammer
Album Preorder:
https://volksoup.bandcamp.com/album/10p-jazz
Album Artwork
Live Dates
3rd October - Chemic Tavern, Leeds *ALBUM LAUNCH* (tickets)
28th October - Le Cessonnais, Saint Brieuc, FR
29th October - Penny Lane, Rennes (supporting KEG), FR
30th October - L’Avant Scène Bar, Bordeaux, FR
31st October - Water Moulin, Tournai, BE
4th December - Soup, Manchester^
5th December - Kazimier Gardens, Liverpool^
6th December - Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds^
^with Gaol Bird
Volk Soup formed in early 2020 in Leeds, founded by Harry Jones (vocals, guitar, lyrics) and Ryan Walker (bass). The project was quickly paused by the pandemic, delaying their first live performance until October 2021. By that point, they had added drummer Luc Gibbons and recorded their earliest material as a raw, angular three-piece. As they gained momentum on the Leeds underground circuit, the band expanded to a six-piece in 2022—bringing in Ryan Geach (saxophone), Luca Vitale (trumpet), and George Orton (guitar)—and along with the new members came a broader, brassier, more unpredictable sound.
Their style threads together wiry post-punk, dissonant noise, and bursts of free-jazz intensity, stitched with a low-end swagger and a chaotic sense of precision. The music leans into abrasion and absurdity, full of sudden turns and structure-bending arrangements—equal parts menace, muscle, and meticulous collapse.
In 2023, they released Incompetent Hits, a compilation of early singles via French label Swish Swash, and toured France in support. The release found its way to Kevin Curty, founder of Dipterid Records, who was immediately drawn to the band’s frantic energy and distinct visual identity. When Volk Soup began seeking support for their debut full-length, Dipterid signed on to release it.
That record—10p Jazz—is the band’s most complete statement to date. Produced by Oscar McKie (Westside Cowboy) it captures the raw force of their live set while pushing further into uneasy textures and untested ideas. Momentum twists, structures collapse, and nothing stays settled for long. “With 10p Jazz we wanted to bring some coherence to the chaos. We wanted to capture our live energy without forfeiting what it is we wanted to explore musically. We felt we needed to take the frenetic intensity we’re known for and to add depth”, shares vocalist Harry Jones.
As usual with Volk Soup the band explore a wide and varied range of themes, touching upon some of their most personal ideas to date, from self betterment to professional digressions. But as usual, these ideas are abstracted somewhat, never straightforwardly biographical. On songs like Mass Village Angst and Nothing in Tomorrow they tackle increasing social tensions, picking up on the subtle resentments of a small town England “No pitchforks sharpened/ Only tongues” sings Harry Jones. But where Mass Village Angst talks of the quieter hatred being harboured in corners of the country, Nothing in Tomorrow broaches what it might look like if this division reaches fever pitch “Blood will spill from corners of the city/ Gushing forth by decree of the committee”.
If this is Volk Soup at their most polemical then there’s plenty more of the irreverence they’re typically known for. Spellbound by the Phallus is a homoerotic proto-disco track that takes inspiration from songs of film star Divine. Holy Building Tourist is a gentle ode to popping into a church wherever you go, if not in piety then in appreciation. It’s the bands most considered arrangement, more Leonard Cohen than The Birthday Party.
It’s a diverse piece of work that takes a lot of unpacking. 10p Jazz is the picture of a band stretching themselves further than they have before. Sonically, lyrically and thematically their most complex work yet.
Tracklisting
1. Bastard
2. Reptilian Brain
3. Professionalism Debunked
4. Friends
5. Holy Building Tourist
6. Mass Village Angst
7. Nothing in Tomorrow
8. Spellbound by the Phallus
9. Meet Me by the Willow
