The Soft Pink Truth

Balancing commitments as a scholar, author, and one half of the inventive electronic pair Matmos, Drew Daniel applies his agile studio craft and channels dance music’s capacity for reinvention under the Soft Pink Truth moniker. The project’s successive releases have traced stylistic paths nearly as divergent as those taken by Matmos. Its 2003 debut, Do You Party?, fused funk, disco, ’80s R&B, and the music of Erik Satie into an invitation to the dance floor, whereas the 2004 follow-up, Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?, recast vintage punk and hardcore numbers as house tracks whose subversiveness exceeded that of the source material. Similar ground was revisited on 2014’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?, whose polished, club-ready grooves reconciled Daniel’s affection for the style with the reactionary stances of certain practitioners. Subsequent releases—the 2020 pairing of R&B and post-classical elements on Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? and the lush, ambient-inflected disco of 2022’s Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?—supplied moments of collective uplift amid surrounding political and social strife.

The Soft Pink Truth originated after Matthew Herbert, having seen Daniel perform in Paris with Matmos, urged him to produce a house record. Daniel answered with the 2001 12" Soft Pink Missy, issued on Herbert’s Soundslike imprint. A second 12", “Promofunk,” appeared at the end of 2002 and contained a euphoric reworking of Vanity 6’s “Make Up” (with Blevin Blectum on vocals) alongside “Gender Studies,” a demonstration of intricate sample-based construction tailored for the floor. The January 2003 album Do You Party? gathered the eight cuts from those earlier singles and added three new pieces. Later that year the “Acting Crazy” 12" surfaced, presenting Herbert, Safety Scissors, and Brooks remixes of “Do You Party?” together with the fresh title track. On October 2004’s Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?, Daniel broadened his practice of radical reinterpretation by converting songs by ’70s and ’80s punk and hardcore bands such as Crass, Minor Threat, and Die Kreuzen into streamlined, dance-oriented productions.

After Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?, Daniel moved from San Francisco to Baltimore, continued working with Matmos, and entered academia. Occasional live appearances as the Soft Pink Truth persisted, yet scheduling pressures restricted further recordings. For nearly a decade, remixes for artists including Otto Von Schirach, Björk, and Grizzly Bear constituted the majority of his Soft Pink Truth output. The project’s third full-length, Why Do the Heathen Rage?, finally emerged in June 2014. Self-recorded in Daniel’s home studio and released by Thrill Jockey, the set applied the Soft Pink Truth approach to black metal and featured contributions from Locrian’s Terence Hannum, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, Anohni, Horse Lords’ Owen Gardner, and Matmos’ M.C. Schmidt, Daniel’s partner. The following year Daniel self-issued Why Pay More?, a compilation whose title track had been commissioned for a 2009 performance and which also gathered previously unreleased material from earlier Soft Pink Truth sessions.

Matmos and academic obligations again prompted an extended hiatus, yet the Soft Pink Truth reappeared in 2020 with two complementary albums. Thrill Jockey issued Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? that May, shifting the project toward deep house and post-classical compositions. Conceived as a response to the charged political and social atmosphere of the late 2010s and early 2020s, the record incorporated choral vocals from Colin Self, Angel Deradoorian, and Jana Hunter, plus work by percussionist Sarah Hennies, saxophonists Andrew Bernstein and John Berndt, and piano contributions from Schmidt and Koye Berry. Weeks later Daniel self-released Am I Free to Go?, a set of crust-punk covers originally by Discharge and Doom whose proceeds benefited the International Anti-Fascist Legal Defence Fund. Daniel rejoined Matmos for the August triple-hour collaborative work The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form and for May 2022’s Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, a tribute to the Polish composer, theoretician, critic, and playwright Bogusław Schaeffer that blended sampled excerpts of his music with live instrumentation. Three months afterward the mini-album Was It Ever Real? signaled a fresh phase for the Soft Pink Truth, opening with a cover of Coil’s “The Anal Staircase” and including a remix of the title track from the October 2022 full-length Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?. Sustaining the exuberant, wide-ranging spirit of Shall We Go On Sinning, the album explored disco, jazz, house, and ambient palettes, with Wasner again among Daniel’s principal collaborators.