Start Listening To: Volleyball
Psychedelic band Volleyball give us the low down on their upcoming EP Kitua Fortune
Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
There are 4 of us that make up Volleyball - The music we make sits somewhere under the psych umbrella, moments of catchy melody, to moments of crazy lose yourself psych. Rudi on guitar and vocals hails from Guernsey, Tom, bass & vocals from Kent, Thom, drums & vocals is from staines & Hugh is from Yorkshire.
What encouraged you to start your own band?
We seemed to have a similar vision of the kind of music we liked and wanted to make. As a team, our skills compliment each other in practical and creative ways, we can depend on each other and also surprise each other to keep things interesting.
If you were to describe your sound to someone who’d never heard you before, what would you say?
On a basic level we are a classic 4 piece, drums - guitar - bass - synth. Our recordings tend to bring in some more electronic elements but essentially we write songs which have a surfy / psychey feel to the guitars, punchy colourful drums, solid melodic basslines and topped off with ethereal synths.
Your upcoming EP Kitua Fortune is a kaleidoscopic trip down psychedelia lane. What makes you gravitate towards psychedelic music?
It was never really a conscious decision, it just gravitated towards this sound naturally. We did go to some odd places before getting to where we are now. Probably a subconscious thing of all the music we listen to now and growing up, making its way in there.
If you had to pick a personal favourite track from the EP, what track would that be?
That's a tough one, I think we all have our own favourites depending on mood, super diplomatic answer... One of the things I love about the EP is that my favourite on record might not be my favourite to play live. They can take on a different meaning live. If we had to pick, the fact that ‘Self Portrait’ is quite a departure from our usual song form, way more chilled out and a new place for us.
What was your favourite & least favourite part of making the EP?
Favourite part has to be when a song comes together, be it straight away in the writing phase or when we’ve been working on it for ages and find the element that makes the track. Least favourite part is finishing it, as we do everything in house it can be hard to gain perspective when tweaking the final mixes.
What was the best gig you guys ever played and why?
We had a great gig recently headlining the BBC Introducing stage at Guernsey Together Festival. It was the first gig we'd played in a while and a scorching day, and playing outside in the sun made it pretty special.
Do you prefer playing smaller or bigger gigs and why?
We don’t really have a preference, each brings something different to the table Its super fun to play loud in a small venue but equally it is great to have more space and be able to move around as you would on a larger stage. We are currently really enjoying getting the songs out to the world in the live setting. We haven't played many bigger shows at this stage so don’t have many to choose from…but you can’t really beat having a big crowd in front of you.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s important to you?
[Rudi] Rubber soul - The Beatles. It’s important to me because the songs have a sense of nostalgia but also provide something relevant to me now. The songs are so playable if you want to pick up and play a guitar, the parts are simple but interesting.
[Hugh] Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels for me, it was the first record which sonically left a massive impression on me, oh and the songwriting is amazing too.
What advice would you give for anyone trying to achieve a similar sound to your music?
Buy a delay pedal and put everything through it. In more detail, create a solid drum beat but change something about it to make it slightly more unusual, form a melodic but repetitive bassline, guitar chords deep in chorus wobble with delay, synth chords which sound rich but weird and vocals which flow over the top.
Can you tell us more about how you produce your music?
Each song varies, different combinations of people start different songs, the main consistent is it will always be finished with four of us in the room. There is no ego in the process and even though it's hard to say goodbye to a part we might love, it's always what's best for the song.
We self produce on Ableton and have everything in the cloud so any one of us can jump into the project if they have an idea. We find it a super creative way of working as we get everyone's contributions.
What expectations do you have of yourself as a musicians/artists?
I think one of them is to always push ourselves creatively and musically, once we get comfortable writing in one way then we know its time to change.
I think we all like pushing ourselves in other fields too, design, visually etc, so we always want to expand on the last thing we did and make it better!
How do you deal with other people’s expectations of you?
We tend not to mind too much, we have fun and love the music we make, some people will dig it others won’t…that's ok. The most effective thing we’ve found is to set our own expectations which work to push ourselves, so these become the most important and relevant.
Where do you find comfort?
By water
Dog walks
Coffee
Is there any new music from 2022 you have been enjoying?
Kikagaku Moyo’s new record ‘Kumoyo Island’ is amazing & Toro y Moi’s ‘Mahal’ is on repeat too.
Where do you see your band one year from now?
Our aim for the next year is to release 2 x 6 track mini albums and play a load of shows. We hope next year it gets us to a place to play more shows and record an album. We really want to bring together a scene of like - bands, playing psych music in the UK. There are loads of bands across the world, especially US and Australia in our genre. We’d like to pull the UK psych side together to have more of a representation globally..
