The Soft Pink Truth sounds like a brilliant academic who spent the night in a basement club and decided to translate the experience into a series of intricate, glitchy puzzles. It is house music, but it is house music that has been disassembled and put back together using the logic of a collage artist. You will hear the steady thump of a kick drum, but it is often surrounded by crystalline textures, micro-samples of found sounds, and a sense of space that feels both clinical and deeply human.
What makes Drew Daniel's solo project truly distinctive is its fearless subversion of genre. Whether he is turning abrasive black metal into shimmering disco or reimagining hardcore punk through a queer electronic lens, there is an underlying sense of play and intellectual mischief. The music manages to be deeply nerdy and physically infectious at the same time, rewarding close listening with its technical detail while still providing enough rhythmic momentum to keep the room moving.
For those new to the project, 'Do You Party?' is the essential entry point for his early, more direct house explorations. If you want to hear his conceptual brilliance at its peak, 'Why Do the Heathen Rage?' offers a fascinating look at how extreme metal can be translated into electronic profanations. For a more recent, lush, and choral-influenced experience, 'Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase?' shows a beautiful evolution into more meditative, ambient-leaning territories.
The Soft Pink Truth is an experimental house music side-project from Drew Daniel, one-half of experimental electronic music duo Matmos. Daniel started the project on a dare from Matthew Herbert that he could not produce a house record. Do You Party?, the first album from the Soft Pink Truth, was released in 2003, and featured, among other original songs, a cover of Vanity 6's "Make Up". In 2004, Daniel followed up with the Soft Pink Truth's second album, entitled Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?) (irreverently abbreviated to DYWNWODYWTSPT), a reference to a song by Minutemen. The album consisted entirely of house covers of classic hardcore and punk songs including "Do They Owe Us a Living?" by Crass, 'Homosexual' by the Angry Samoans and "Real Shocks" by the Swell Maps. The Soft Pink Truth also has recorded a number of remixes, including one for Björk's single "It's in Our Hands". Matmos had also collaborated with Björk on her 2001 album Vespertine. In October 2007, Daniel announced on his site that he was creating new music under the guise of the Soft Pink Tube. The album, Why Pay More?, was released in 2015, but under the regular Soft Pink Truth alias. In 2014, the Soft Pink Truth released an album of black metal covers entitled Why Do the Heathen Rage?, with the subtitle "Electronic Profanations of Black Metal Classics". The album featured guest appearances from Anohni (listed on the album as Antony Hegarty), Terence Hannum of Locrian, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, M.C. Schmidt (Daniel's partner in Matmos), and Owen Gardner of Horse Lords. A video for the cover of Venom's song "Black Metal" was released on Vimeo. In 2020, the musical act released two albums: Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase?, made up of original compositions on Thrill Jockey and Am I Free to Go?, a collection of crust punk covers that raised money for the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund.
Shares house (subgenres); spoken word, processed, deadpan (vocal style)
Shares house (subgenres); sample based, minimalist, digital clarity (production style)
Shares sample based, minimalist, layered dense (production style); house, ambient techno (subgenres)
Shares house, ambient techno (subgenres); late night, urban night, focused work (atmosphere)
Shares house (subgenres); sample based, minimalist, digital clarity (production style)
Shares sample based, minimalist, digital clarity (production style); house (subgenres)
Shares sample based, minimalist, layered dense (production style); late night, urban night, basement show (atmosphere)
Shares sample based, minimalist, digital clarity (production style); late night, urban night, focused work (atmosphere)
Shares sample based, minimalist, layered dense (production style); house, ambient techno (subgenres)
Shares sample based, playful, library, house (signature)
Shares sample based, playful, house, spoken word (signature)
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