Interview With 'Voksal'

Firstly, introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about the band and how you came to be?

We are Voksal a four-piece based in London. The band was formed by singer Zak and guitarist Dom about five years ago. It started out with the two of them spending Saturday mornings demoing songs in a bedroom, and progressed to the point where we were recording at Abbey Road. There’s been a few bumps in the way, lineup changes, strange gigs but it’s been a lot of fun.

What were you all up too prior to the band, was this always the chosen path or did you have other dreams and aspirations?

The reality these days is you have to have multiple aspirations. But we all felt the power of music from a young age, and still feel it now. The only joint aspiration is to improve the music we make and keep enjoying the process of writing songs.

Tell us about your latest release and why our readers should check it out.

The songs are sharp and to the point, but with layers of melody that will help you discover more with each listen. Whether that’s a new bassline, a guitar sound or lyric that you’re trying to figure out.

But come see us live, all music is better live.

Have you ever come face to face with someone within the music scene who has left you awestruck and why?

Can you be awestruck by a person? You can be awestruck by someone’s ability, their performance their songs. But face-to-face that’s something different.

I’ll give you an example. Bon Iver’s album’s regularly leaves me ‘awestruck’ amazing, original musical constructions. But his live performance was terrible he had headphones on the whole gig and the use of samples really reduced the live nature of it.

If we were to head out to one of your live shows what can ourselves and others expect?

That’s where the soul of any song is, when the music is responsive. If the energy in the room is the conductor of a band, it makes the fast parts faster, the quiet moments softer. It reinvents a vocal line or adds extra tremor to a guitar riff. And when you come to a gig you are no longer a spectator you’re a participant in the experience.

If you had one artist/band that you could go on tour with tomorrow who would it be and why?

Arctic Monkeys, you’re playing stadiums every week with a great band. Plus it seems like nobody has ever really got into the mind of Alex Turner. Maybe spending months touring with him and haranguing him with questions would reveal his inner demons to you, and possibly the reason behind his genius or he’d just tell you to “fuck off” and kick you off the tour. Either way it would be one hell of a ride.

You can spend an hour with a musical icon living or dead, who would you pick, why and what would you speak about?

Kurt Cobain. How did he make the lyric “hello, hello, hello, how low” sound breathtakingly brilliant?

Also how did he play a guitar with diagonal string? There are many questions that Courtney Love or Dave Grohl don’t have the capacity to answer in his absence.

And finally and most importantly is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?

Of course, who hasn’t stained their white vest with Christmas dinner and then walked barefoot over broken fairy lights in honour of Bruce, I do it every year.

Website - voksal.co.uk

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/voksal/