The fourth Soft Riot album, You Never Know What Might Come Next, was released four years ago today on EXBTN Records out of Paris. In hindsight it was sort of a transitional record, moving from the cinematic, atmospheric stylings of the first two LPs No Longer Stranger and Fiction Prediction into a more rhythm-oriented mutant “synthpop” sound.
It was to date the only Soft Riot album that was mixed by someone else, having employed the ever-talented Owen Pratt of Noi Kabát and Uncanny Valley to handle the mixing duties at the old Flesh & Bone Studios in London. At the time it seemed like outside input on how it should sound was the right thing to do.
There’s two versions of the record: there’s the standard LP/digital version of the record with eight album tracks and then a limited edition CD with an additional four tracks, including a very ambitious cover of “We Are The Chopped” by Canadian underground punk/hardcore legends Nomeansno.
There was a lot of experimenting with linear narratives in the lyrics on some tracks, something which was more or less abandoned in later years. Everything is a learning process. The tracks “You Are A Caged Dancer” and “A Scene From A Dark Beach” still get played out in live sets somewhat frequently to this date.
You can listen to and buy this album here:
There were also three videos made for this album, which were arguably the funnest ones to make out of the whole catalogue of video work done until now: