Q&A: Violent Soho
DYNAMIC WITH A PUNK CORE - Violent Soho continues to craft their identity and sound, and never seem to disappoint. Their new album, Everything is A-Ok, takes an honest approach to our relationship with social media, the suburbia culture for the middle class and more. Highlighting endless hours of hard work and the band’s dedication to putting out a truly sound record, Everything is A-Ok marks Violent Soho latest’s chapter, this time with support from label Pure Noise. Check out their new album and read below to hear from drummer Michael Richard and his thoughts on the album, their creative process and what’s next.
LUNA: Which track means the most to you and why?
RICHARDS: For me, "Easy" because it required the most work in playing around with the groove and finding spaces within the rhythm. The dynamic and stylistic elements of the song bounce around quite a lot and so having a finished product that sounds exactly as you had considered it to work when you only ever really had heard the song in your mind is incredibly satisfying, but this is just me talking as a drummer. Overall I like to look at every song as requiring a structural approach that operates within the stylistic sensibilities of each song and with this album I'm very happy overall with every song.
LUNA: On the flip end, which track was the most difficult to finalize? Why did you decide to stick with it?
RICHARDS: To be honest, the track that was the most difficult to finalise never made it on the record but that's only really a result of having spent a very long time in pre-production before going in to track this album. Without having done so much prep work we wouldn't necessarily have been so comfortable going in and recording so much of the album live, which we knew was a necessary approach in order to nail what we wanted to achieve sonically on this record.
LUNA: Sonically, what were some of your favorite elements the new album incorporated?
RICHARDS: We tracked a lot to tape and so the focus was to get a lot of takes completely live. The pay-off was huge, but the major challenge was to affect very little tonal dynamic within takes, which is not always as easy to pull off as you want it to be. It was a totally necessary thing for the overall timbre of the record and went a long way in appropriating the sort of -pop-art-as-grunge suburbia type aesthetic that we wanted the record to have.
LUNA: The album leans on a more honest side and touches on our society’s obsession with social media. Can you talk a bit more about some the common narratives/theme you explore?
RICHARDS: The album leans on a lot of themes and commentary that reflect the concept of suburbia but also very specifically the middle class ideal of life that, although it may be perhaps banal and mundane, we still take for granted, and in fact it's this 'for granted' that causes it to be this way and so in actuality our very own privilege is a gateway to banality. There is inherently something dialectical in this which we felt was only really expressively felt by contrasting lyrical and musical dynamics. We wanted this approach to reveal a lot of ironic joyful moments on the record. The idea is to strike a chord of enjoyment although you're well aware of your own ironic and class-oriented hedonism.
LUNA: How often are you thinking of the listener when writing the music?
RICHARDS: It's everything.
LUNA: This is your fifth record, so how do you find that balance between putting out something fresh for your fans but not totally straying from the sound you’ve built?
RICHARDS: By always approaching our work musically with the intent of making something artisitcally modeled toward a popular consumption. We make working class music but we're educated blokes, we understand the difference between high art, lowbrow art and wanking yourself off. We know our fans expect us to have this approach and it's only fair to stay true to ourselves and them in this regard. That's just Violent Soho.
LUNA: Earlier this year you signed to Pure Noise Records - congrats! In our DIY age where a lot of artists decide to remain independent, what value do you think a label still has?
RICHARDS: Some labels are fuckin awful so in reality the liquidity of the music industry definitely does not make working with that sort of industrial machinary necessary but they are very helpful when you find yourself in a situation where you know you can trust the people you work with, the relationship you build and the honesty and trust you can share with each other in bulding something up from the ground. For us the question has to do with people, not labels.
LUNA: Any goals or intentions for the rest of 2020 you’d like to share?
RICHARDS: Survive.
