About

Hotel Soap is an independent imprint functioning as a label, publisher and studio for the work of Benji Heinke and selected collaborators.

Founded in 2026 after several years of self-releasing, Hotel Soap is rooted in postmodernism, pop art and post-punk aesthetics, and draws inspiration from the visual and cultural worlds built by labels such as DFA, Factory and Domino. Its name comes from a 2009 Guardian article on the strange moral logic of music piracy.

Hotel Soap provides a framework for records, moving image, printed matter and release design, treating music not simply as content but as an authored cultural object with its own atmosphere, context and material presence.

Benji Heinke is an artist, composer, songwriter and producer, born in Somerset in 1995. He came to music through a Fine Art background, having studied painting and printmaking at Winchester School of Art. Since 2018, he has released a growing catalogue of albums and singles shaped by a distinctly visual sensibility and an interest in the relationship between image, mood and sound.

Heinke designs the artwork for his releases and directs videos for selected tracks, approaching each project as a complete aesthetic world rather than simply a standalone recording or collection of songs. His work draws on pop semiotics as much as music itself, with visual influences including James Rosenquist, Richard Hamilton and Joe Tilson. Musically they range from New Order and Talking Heads to Peter Gabriel and LCD Soundsystem.

Hotel Soap serves as the publishing, production and archival framework through which this body of work is released and documented, while remaining open to selected collaborative projects.

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