An Overview

A fourth revision for 2020 of the SOFT RIOT track "Cinema Eyes", the original version released on the 2013 album FICTION PREDICTION. Originally released November 2020 on the Forbidden Figures Compilation and also released on the compilation album Second Lives out 28 June 2021.

Second Lives

Cinema Eyes (Version IV)

PREMIERE COMME DES LARMES – CDL

PREMIERE CDL \\ Soft - Riot - Windows To The Wild [Miseria] (2021)

Artist » Soft - Riot - https://soundcloud.com/softriot

Ep Name » Upperwave Selections Vol. 1

Label » MISERIA - https://soundcloud.com/miseriarecords

Berlin, Germany

Format: Tape + Digital Music

Release date: DECEMBER 01

BUY HERE   >>>   https://miseriarecords.bandcamp.com/

Windows To The Wild” was written, recorded, produced and mixed by JJD at Studio Carillon, Glasgow UK — 23-31 May 2021. All instruments and vocals by JJD with extra background vocals by MM Lyle.


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Upperwave Selections Vol. 1

PREMIERE CDL \\ Soft - Riot - Windows To The Wild [Miseria] (2021)

MISERIA

PRIVATE PLAYLIST FOR PRESS

This digital 3-track single offers three versions of the track “Windows To The Wild” by Soft Riot, which was originally released in December 2021 on the compilation Upperwave Selections Vol. 1 on the Berlin-based label Miseria. This track has taken on an extended life of its own, with Athens-based EBM artist Qual (William Maybelline of Lebanon Hanover) picking up the track to do his own stompy, aggressive rework of the track followed by Glasgow-based dark electronic disco artist Ubre Blanca twisting the track into a propulsive, rhythmic dance number. Rounding out these new mutations of the track, Soft Riot himself has cooked up an alternate version of the track into a new, extended “Sodium Glow Version”. These three versions are gathered on this release as a digital 3-track EP to present to the world while a new album by Soft Riot starts to come together behind the scenes for release in 2023.

Windows To The Wild (Soft Riot's Sodium Glow Version)

A Spade Is Played Again is the first of two digital single releases from the 2023 album No, out 11 August 2023 on Possession Records / Wave Tension Records.

This variation, “A Spade Is Played Again (Breakdown Version)”, is an alternate Soft Riot version of the track, twisting the original far more into grainy post-punk territory. Having put down the guitar for synths since the start of the Soft Riot project, the “axe” is dusted off for this special version, providing shards of metallic noise and dubbed out noise-rock fragments over a propulsive beat.

https://softriot.bandcamp.com/album/a-spade-is-played-again

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE : https://youtu.be/VUn9WBNFwDw

A Spade Is Played Again

Purchase

A Spade Is Played Again (Breakdown Version)

Linked Between Two Minds is the second of two digital single releases from the 2023 album No, out 11 August 2023 on Possession Records / Wave Tension Records.

The first track off of No., Linked Between Two Minds propels with a cosmic, space disco epic with some twists and turns referencing telepathic, esoteric themes.

NO. Album
Bandcamp (LISTEN/BUY)> https://softriot.bandcamp.com/album/no

LINKED BETWEEN TWO MINDS Extended Single:
Bandcamp (LISTEN/BUY)> https://softriot.bandcamp.com/album/linked-between-two-minds
Spotify (STREAM) > https://open.spotify.com/album/0QXxgQtoM60g2zpKkbShYL?si=hmk7Tti8TCGBuWiiporRVw

LINKED BETWEEN TWO MINDS Promo Video
https://youtu.be/rlpS-NFdJLw

Buy Album

Linked Between Two Minds

This is a from the new album "You Never Know What Might Come Next" out on Exhibition Records (Paris FR - www.exbtnrecords.com). Release date 19 September 2015.

Pre-release limited edition CD available now! Limited to 50 copies:
http://store.softriot.com/album/you-never-know-what-might-come-next

Vinyl/Digital out September 2015. There will be an official announcement very soon so in the meantime subscribe to www.facebook.com/softriot/ and www.twitter.com/softriotuk/ to get the news in the coming weeks (as of 14 Aug 2015).

More information this record here: http://softriot.com/recording/never-know-might-come-next/

Buy Digital/CD/LP

You Are A Caged Dancer

This is a from the new album "You Never Know What Might Come Next" out on Exhibition Records (Paris FR - www.exbtnrecords.com). Release date 19 September 2015.

Pre-release limited edition CD available now! Limited to 50 copies:
store.softriot.com/album/you-never…might-come-next

Vinyl/Digital out September 2015. There will be an official announcement very soon so in the meantime subscribe to www.facebook.com/softriot/ and www.twitter.com/softriotuk/ to get the news in the coming weeks (as of 14 Aug 2015).

More information this record here: softriot.com/recording/never-know-might-come-next/


A Scene From A Dark Beach

Soft Riot is JJD : Voice, synthesizers, programming, effects and found sounds. Recorded and mixed at Studio 159, Sheffield UK. Extra vocals by MM Lyle of Marcel Wave. Original song written by Bruce Cockburn and released on his album “Stealing Fire” (1984). Additional re-records and mix done April 2021. www.softriot.com

On the upcoming Soft Riot compilation album "Second Lives", to be released June 2021 on Possession Records.

the first mix of this track was originally released on the "Young and Cold Sampler Vol.3" from Young & Cold Records. Release date: July 15, 2016.

Young & Cold Sampler Vol. 3

Order

Lovers In A Dangerous Time

From the album "The Outsider In The Mirrors"

Release date: 09 February 2018
Pre-orders start: 08 January 2018

For more information about this record and to order, go to http://www.possessionrecords.com/releases/soft-riot-the-outsider-in-the-mirrors/

The Eyes On The Walls

Release date: 09 February 2018
Pre-orders start: 08 January 2018

For more information about this record and to order, go to http://www.possessionrecords.com/releases/soft-riot-the-outsider-in-the-mirrors/

Waiting For Something Terrible To Happen

Fiction Prediction is a collection of songs selected for a first official <a href="http://www.softriot.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Soft Riot</a> LP release, these tracks being a confident advancement in the unique and engaging “Soft Riot” sound developed on prior releases. Drawing inspiration from synthesizer-based film soundtracks of yesteryear, drones, early EBM, minimal synth, a dose of psychedelic synthpop and a heavy dose of throbbing appregiated rhythms, Soft Riot is a science-fiction heavy soundscape that narrates the listener through today’s fractured, excessive landscape with hints of black humour.&#13;
&#13;
Soft Riot, coming from a more punk rock pedigree, often places more focus than the norm on his lyrical content, bringing in detailed pictures and sometimes even linear narrative storylines to subjects such as modern living, technology, surveillance, environment, overpopulation, enlightenment, life elsewhere, forewarning about catastrophic events, vain people in gyms, and not having enough time. The influences come less from other musical artists but more so from written fiction and film —a future predicted by fiction!&#13;
&#13;
----------------------------&#13;
Soft Riot is JJD : Voice, synthesizers, samplers, programming, found sounds. Additional vocals in “There Just Isn’t Enough Time” by MM Lyle. All tracks written in 2011-2012 by Soft Riot (Jack Duckworth).&#13;
&#13;
Tracks 1 originally released on the “Another Drone In Your Head” EP available through&#13;
Tundra Dubs. Tracks 1, 2, 5, 7 and 9 previously released on the “Hyperbolic Masses” limited edition cassette in May 2012, which is no longer available. Less than 100 made with no digital release.&#13;
&#13;
Tracks recorded in sessions between Summer 2011 and Summer 2012 at Studio 10 and Studio 55 in London, England. Artwork and package design by JJD. Artist photo by Del Jae. Live photo by Greg Allan.

----------------
Purchase on LP, CD or Cassette at http://softriot.bandcamp.com

If you wish to buy this album digitally, check out:

Other Voices Records (Europe)
othervoicesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fiction-prediction

Volar Records (North America)
volarrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fiction-prediction-2

Buy Physical Copy

Cinema Eyes

Fiction Prediction is a collection of songs selected for a first official <a href="http://www.softriot.com">Soft Riot</a> LP release, these tracks being a confident advancement in the unique and engaging “Soft Riot” sound developed on prior releases. Drawing inspiration from synthesizer-based film soundtracks of yesteryear, drones, early EBM, minimal synth, a dose of psychedelic synthpop and a heavy dose of throbbing appregiated rhythms, Soft Riot is a science-fiction heavy soundscape that narrates the listener through today’s fractured, excessive landscape with hints of black humour.

Soft Riot, coming from a more punk rock pedigree, often places more focus than the norm on his lyrical content, bringing in detailed pictures and sometimes even linear narrative storylines to subjects such as modern living, technology, surveillance, environment, overpopulation, enlightenment, life elsewhere, forewarning about catastrophic events, vain people in gyms, and not having enough time. The influences come less from other musical artists but more so from written fiction and film —a future predicted by fiction!

----------------------------
Soft Riot is JJD : Voice, synthesizers, samplers, programming, found sounds. Additional vocals in “There Just Isn’t Enough Time” by MM Lyle. All tracks written in 2011-2012 by Soft Riot (Jack Duckworth).

Tracks 1 originally released on the “Another Drone In Your Head” EP available through
Tundra Dubs. Tracks 1, 2, 5, 7 and 9 previously released on the “Hyperbolic Masses” limited edition cassette in May 2012, which is no longer available. Less than 100 made with no digital release.

Tracks recorded in sessions between Summer 2011 and Summer 2012 at Studio 10 and Studio 55 in London, England. Artwork and package design by JJD. Artist photo by Del Jae. Live photo by Greg Allan.

----------------
Purchase on LP, CD or Cassette at softriot.bandcamp.com

If you wish to buy this album digitally, check out:

Other Voices Records (Europe)
othervoicesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fic…rediction

Volar Records (North America)
volarrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fictio…prediction-2

Your Own Private Underworld

When Push Comes To Shove is the seventh studio album by Soft Riot, the stylised musical alter-ego of Glasgow-based Canadian artist JJD. The album will be released by Glasgow's Possession Records on 11 November 2019 in LP, CD and digital formats.

Resonating with references from all corners of the synthpop’s origins (DAF, Fad Gadget and John Foxx to name a few), Soft Riot’s latest release nonetheless manages to retain its own individual voice, melding and reinterpreting its antecedents with a personal twist and an impressive demonstration of synth-craft and programming. Following on from 2018’s The Outsider in the Mirrors, these ten tracks represent a change in themes and an evolution in production and sound.

The forthcoming single and album opener "Taking The Edge Off" sets out the Soft Riot manifesto, a propulsive future-synth tale of forging ever-forwards in an increasingly noisy world. "It's No Laughing Matter" is a hedonistic yet propulsive dance-floor slammer — shades of minimal synth and metallic Belgian new beat condense in side one closer "Fate’s Got A Bone To Pick With You" and the dizzying italo-matic muscle workout "Don’t Get Yourself Bent Out Of Shape" is the ultimate self-help smack down.

Although there’s no overarching concept to the album, Soft Riot has used this release as platform to experiment with his own concept of “déja vu”, using minute details of musical phrases and lyrics that have been used before in previously released Soft Riot material, and even between songs on this album. Some of these mirrored details are very subtle and would only be picked up by someone who has listened to all of the material up until now. It could also be the underlying black humour of Soft Riot’s work, mischievously playing off the old saying “it’s all been done before”.

The tracks were all composed in an extended hiatus from live performance between November 2018 and January 2019; a deliberate move on the part of JJD in order to foster a more focused creative atmosphere and allow for the writing process to have a more intuitive flow. This also allowed for a deeper exploration of sound design of his equipment, with this release utilising a range of different synths, something that reflects in the depth and richness of the new album's sounds.

This revision in JJD’s approach also impacts on the thematics of his writing. As JJD says himself "I feel real life over this decade has gotten a bit stranger than fiction” — speculative preoccupations of isolation and paranoia have taken on a more personal dimension in his lyrics. There’s tales of alien visitors who fall to the trappings and joys of humanity while on a mission (“By The Skin Of Your Teeth”) to topics less cosmic and more close to home, such as the uplifting emotions one feels within a gathering of friends with the third track, “The Lost Weekend”.

The outcome has been a sideways step into more new wave pop aesthetics, and a looser sound (underpinned by the warmth of the production). This overall makes the album groove into a more dance-floor orientated full sound, thawing some of the cold-wave angularity The Outsider In The Mirrors.

Fate's Got A Bone To Pick With You

Taking Off The Edge

When I write songs there’s occasions when the original ideas split off and become multiple versions of one song. In most cases only one of those versions ever gets completed and released. The track “Cinema Eyes” from 2013’s Fiction Prediction is an exception, where three versions eventually got released. Perhaps some other versions of songs will surface one day.

The track “It’s No Laughing Matter” from the latest album "When Push Comes To Shove" however is a track that I opted to do a different version of, mainly as I took a slowed down sample of the intro of that track to be used in segments of the 15 minute long “Possession Records Short Film 02” that premiered back in November. That segment got a druggy, almost “vaporwave” treatment to simulate zoning out on the couch navigating through bargain-bin DVD menus at three o’clock in the morning.

From there I got invited to do a screening of various films and music videos I’ve done for Soft Riot and Possession Records at a small event here in Glasgow in December called “Voidamol”. For that event I took that slowed down loop and fleshed it out into a 15-minute long track of “muzak” for the background. 

In the end I worked the ideas on that 15-minute long track into a final version at over 6 minutes long, re-recording a lot of the instruments and getting MM Lyle of Marcel Wave to redo some of my vocals from the first original version, resulting in this "obscure dream" version of that track. 

You can listen to the original version from the album “When Push Comes To Shove” here:
https://softriot.bandcamp.com/album/when-push-comes-to-shove

Possession Records Short Film 02 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0ocTnOnyTQ

This version is available as a FREE download.

When Push Comes To Shove

Buy Original Version

It's No Laughing Matter (Obscure Dream Version)

SOFT RIOT "CHIN UP"
Release date : 27 April 2020
Digital / CD / Cassette
(This playlist is a selection of tracks from the album)

UP UNTIL THE RELEASE DATE OF 27 APRIL 2020 YOU CAN BUY THE DIGITAL VERSION OF THIS ALBUM FOR ONLY £1.00 at https://softriot.bandcamp.com/album/chin-up

Chin Up is the eighth album by Soft Riot and a unique one in the Glasgow-based Canadian artist's catalogue. Written mostly at the same time along with the material pressed onto his latest album, When Push Comes To Shove (Possession Records, Nov 2019) — it’s a very different sound, tying in more on a different trajectory of the artist’s output that includes 2014’s soundtrack styled album Some More Terror or even Soft Riot’s initial release, 2011’s No Longer Stranger.

Chin Up contains 11 tracks of what might be loosely described as “ambient synth pop” with a running time of almost an hour. It is in a way a mirror release to When Push Comes To Shove as both records share the same approach to composition, sound design and production techniques but with different results. When Push Comes To Shove, being a milepost in Soft Riot’s main timeline of experimental, auteur synth pop, provides the extrovert side of JJD’s artistic output — an active listen that sounds suitable in a club or other energetic environment. Chin Up is a reflective mirror to these qualities; being the darker introvert counterpart, in a more sporadic, alternative timeline — a passive listen more suitable for the depths of the night after the everything has closed, alone in your apartment.

It’s a very personal release, written in the late night hours as an escape from the trappings of things like culture, scenes, political calamity, information overload, existential dread and the confines of what is considered synthesizer pop music. Its genesis is rooted in a feeling of endless grey malaise, especially in the record’s long and labyrinthine feel — but then taking that initial idea and expanding its colour. There’s a fine balance that’s carefully engineered throughout the record; a balance between creeping dead, melancholy and a sense of finding a moment to rest and internal resolve.

The result is a record full of large cavernous spaces where all of the instruments are placed with careful distance in that space. It’s synth pop shifted into new bearings, where styles of ambience, drone and soundtrack-influenced ideas make themselves the foremost presence.

"It's a chance to rest, reflect and to let my mind wander into spaces devoid of people. To me it’s a very emotional record, although in way that only some people will get."

Much like Chin Up’s partner album, When Push Comes To Shove, Soft Riot carries on his concept of déjà vu, inserting purposefully places music and lyrical objects with the tracks that have been used before.

Further vocal contributions come from Croatian synthpop artist Iv/An (Tonn Recordings) as well as Adam Usi, from Augsburg DE (Young & Cold Records).

Who Knows Where You'll Be

Solitary Figures (with Iv/An)

Laughter Takes Off The Edge

Fiction Prediction is a collection of songs selected for a first official <a href="http://www.softriot.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Soft Riot</a> LP release, these tracks being a confident advancement in the unique and engaging “Soft Riot” sound developed on prior releases. Drawing inspiration from synthesizer-based film soundtracks of yesteryear, drones, early EBM, minimal synth, a dose of psychedelic synthpop and a heavy dose of throbbing appregiated rhythms, Soft Riot is a science-fiction heavy soundscape that narrates the listener through today’s fractured, excessive landscape with hints of black humour.&#13;
&#13;
Soft Riot, coming from a more punk rock pedigree, often places more focus than the norm on his lyrical content, bringing in detailed pictures and sometimes even linear narrative storylines to subjects such as modern living, technology, surveillance, environment, overpopulation, enlightenment, life elsewhere, forewarning about catastrophic events, vain people in gyms, and not having enough time. The influences come less from other musical artists but more so from written fiction and film —a future predicted by fiction!&#13;
&#13;
Released summer 2013 on Other Voices Records / Volar Records : <a href="http://www.othervoicesrecords.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.othervoicesrecords.com</a>&#13;
&#13;
----------------------------&#13;
Soft Riot is JJD : Voice, synthesizers, samplers, programming, found sounds. Additional vocals in “There Just Isn’t Enough Time” by MM Lyle. All tracks written in 2011-2012 by Soft Riot (Jack Duckworth).&#13;
&#13;
Tracks 1 originally released on the “Another Drone In Your Head” EP available through&#13;
Tundra Dubs. Tracks 1, 2, 5, 7 and 9 previously released on the “Hyperbolic Masses” limited edition cassette in May 2012, which is no longer available. Less than 100 made with no digital release.&#13;
&#13;
Tracks recorded in sessions between Summer 2011 and Summer 2012 at Studio 10 and Studio 55 in London, England. Artwork and package design by JJD. Artist photo by Del Jae. Live photo by Greg Allan.

----------------
Purchase on LP, CD or Cassette at softriot.bandcamp.com

If you wish to buy this album digitally, check out:

Other Voices Records (Europe)
othervoicesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fic…rediction

Volar Records (North America)
volarrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fictio…prediction-2

Cinema Eyes (Extended Version)

www.softriot.com/info/
www.possessionrecords.com

Records and merchandise at http://store.possessionrecords.com