Vulkano: Interview

If there’s one thing that’s missing from the UK music scene it’s surely a mystically-inspired psychedelic riot grrrl band. And with that in mind, we caught up with Stockholm’s brilliant Vulkano. Lisa Pyk-Wirstrom and Cissi Effraimsson embody a spirit of idiosyncrasy and freedom that will get any music lover excited:

How long has the band been about? How did you form?

We started the band two years ago but we have played together in different band constellations since we were 14.

Vision Tricks has nothing to do with visual arts. It’s about what we can see with our human eye and things that we can’t see but still are there. It’s about the will to open your eyes and mind to other dimensions.

You’ve been described as being influenced by Pink Floyd but also draw a lot from post-punk. Is there ever a conflict between the psychedelic and punk aspects of your music?

We were still playing in our previous band Those Dancing Days when we felt that like we wanted to try something new. TDD had become more of a commercial band and we didn’t feel like we were being fulfilled creatively. We had to compromise too much.

Cissi had been talking to friends about how she wanted to start a new band and she got a gig in just a week. She didn’t have any songs so she sat down and wrote three songs and asked Lisa and Rebecka if they wanted to play with her. They did and the show went well and was so much fun so we decided to continue.

Your debut single Vision Tricks is aptly named because of your background in visual arts. How important to the band are the visual aspects of what you do?

Visual art is still very important to us. It’s the face of our music and it’s another way for us to express what we want to say with our music.

In what ways does the paranormal feed into your music? Do you think there are any parallels between modern gigs and religious rituals?

Yes we think there are some parallels with rituals in our show. Sometimes on stage it feels like our bodies are overtaken by some sort of force. You’re not only yourself anymore. It’s like your part of something bigger and everyone in the room breathes together. It’s a really cool feeling. That’s when we are the greatest live.

We want to spread love, peace and freedom, kind of like an updated ‘68 flower power movement. For us nature is very important and we feel like in our society today there’s not enough room for spirituality. We are very interested in the spiritual and paranormal world and a lot of the lyrics reflect that.  

We can’t see any conflicts just an interesting meeting. We want to create something new and innovative with our music and when we wrote the album we didn’t plan the sound a lot. We experimented and it kind of just happened. We call our music genre “spiritual punk’n’art”.

Vulkano’s debut single ‘Vision Tricks’ is out now.

Check out this live song on this TV show. Ignore the presenters.