Here is a new interview conducted with Electronic North, a new UK music site based out of Manchester featuring artists in the northern parts of the UK. Thanks to Adrian Thompson who gave the opportunity to provide answers to a number of questions…
Residing in Glasgow via Sheffield, London and Vancouver, Soft Riot is an artist who’s been rocking the synths for the best part of 20 years across various bands and projects. He describes his current output as ‘art punk synth disco’ and you should absolutely be checking it out. We caught up with JJD for a chat as part of our Featured Artist series.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s the story behind Soft Riot and how would you describe your sound?
My name is JJD (Jack Duckworth) and I’m a Vancouverite currently residing in Glasgow after spending some time in London and a little bit in Sheffield. I moved to the UK almost 10 years ago from Canada. I’ve been playing in bands for the better part of 20 years, probably the one I’m known most for back in the homeland would be the “new wave” band Radio Berlin.
Soft Riot started very, very slowly in 2006 when I was still in Vancouver. I was playing in other bands at the time and I was using Soft Riot as a vehicle to try out ideas with electronic music that didn’t suit a band format, mainly as the music was too minimal and too specific the in musical detail that I had in mind that would have made it difficult working in a collaboration. I barely did anything with it until early 2011, a few years after I moved to the UK when I released an initial EP, “No Longer Stranger”. I started performing live with Soft Riot in mid-2011 in London.