Glasgow’s Soft Riot announces ‘Second Lives’

Glasgow-based, Canadian synth artist Soft Riot has announced his ninth and new “compilation” album ‘Second Lives’. The album will be released via Possession Records on June 28th as a digital release, with limited runs of digipak CDs and cassette tapes.

It’s been ten years since the first Soft Riot release, the ‘No Longer Stranger’ EP back in early 2011, making it ten years since Soft Riot has been releasing music. On that touchstone comes ‘Second Lives,’ a compilation album featuring a collection of eight tracks of previously released tracks from obscure singles on various compilations, re-worked versions of previously released older tracks as well as some new unreleased material.

Originally the concept for such a release was to be a more comprehensive archive of unreleased material that has been collecting over the past decade, including demos, odd bits and other ephemera, ‘Second Lives,’ sees the release fine-tuned into an album of its own right, focusing on key tracks and bringing out their strengths, updating old tracks — often ones that are still played out live — to give them new life and perspective.

Rather than being a proper and full new album, this release is a mixture of a number of things. There’s completely new versions of a few old songs from old albums (such as 2013’s ‘Fiction Prediction’), a track intended for a compilation that was never release, and an un-released track of each from previous recent albums ‘When Push Comes To Shove’ (2019) and ‘Chin Up’ (2020).

There’s also new versions of two cover songs done by Canadian artists that were originally put out on releases now out-of-print: Lovers In A Dangerous Time being the first, by songwriter Bruce Cockburn from his 1984 album ‘Stealing Fire’ as well as an interpretation of We Are The Chopped originally done by the legendary punk band Nomeansno from their debut album ‘Mama’ (1982).

You can grab the LP on pre-order now via Bandcamp.

More about Soft Riot

Soft Riot has been described as a synthlord, “master of synths”, and much more. JJD, a mild-mannered graphic designer by day becomes Soft Riot by night — letting the extrovert within run rampant on stage and in the studio. The Soft Riot stage experience is a solo act, utilizing 2 microphones, three synthesizers, on-stage mixer and a host of pedals & analogue effect units.

Soft Riot a is confirmed for Ombra Festival in November in Barcelona, and is tentatively exploring touring options in Europe for later in 2021/2022. Soft Riot is also booked at Gothic Pogo Festival in Leipzig, Germany on June 5th, 2022 alongside Light Asylum and Tilly Electronics.

The coronavirus pandemic put much on hold for performing artists everywhere. For Soft Riot, not being able to play live shows gave way to a lot of introspection, and it became quite a prolific time musically. As well as the ‘Second Lives’ album, there is another full album forthcoming likely in early 2022.