The Soft Pink Truth: Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?

"The Soft Pink Truth began as a lark and a provocation-an invitation to cut rugs and undercut binaries in one fell swoop. Drew Daniel's debut album under the alias, 2003's Do You Party?, operated on multiple levels: A rejoinder to the (straight, white) seriousness of the experimental dance scene, it slipped funk, rap, and disco into a subversive take on glitch-techno aesthetics."

"The following year, the more expressly conceptual Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth? reimagined punk classics from groups like Crass, Minor Threat, and Angry Samoans as insouciant electro-pop bangers, erasing the divide between Daniel's hardcore youth and his electronic adulthood while queering the punk-rock canon. A decade later, Why Do the Heathen Rage? took similar liberties with black metal, gleefully torching underground music's ultimate temple to genre purism."

"But the project has taken on a distinctly utopian tenor in the 2020s. The music has gotten deeper and sweeter; jokey gambits and herky-jerky sounds have fallen away, replaced by a rapturous fusion of deep house and ambient. You can trace the influence of artists like Moodymann, Matthew Herbert, and DJ Sprinkles, but Soft Pink Truth's last two albums-2020's Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? and 2022's Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?-are also awash in chamber music, spiritual jazz, free improv, and classical minimalism."

Soft Pink Truth began as a playful provocation, remixing funk, rap, disco, and glitch-techno to challenge experimental dance scene seriousness and binary thinking. The project reimagined punk and later black metal classics as electro-pop and electronic reinterpretations, bridging Daniel's hardcore past with electronic practice and queering musical canons. In the 2020s the sound shifted toward a utopian fusion of deep house and ambient, integrating chamber music, spiritual jazz, free improvisation, and classical minimalism. Recent albums emphasize collective reverence and solidarity, proposing music as a vehicle for community and hope, while a new record introduces a doubtful undertone within that optimistic trilogy.

Read at Pitchfork