
Released last month, the second Ostrofti album entitled Split Infinitives features eight new tracks of atmospheric, instrumental synth from the alter-ego of Soft Riot. Following that a full visual “graphic” film as been created to accompany the album, acting as sort of a visual background for all eight tracks of this album, providing slow moving visuals that augment whatever environment this release is being listened in.
Using a collage approach from a vast archive of creative commons photographs as well as from Soft Riot‘s own extensive library of collected images, these visions to accompany the music are brought to life in this full length video.
Ostrofti is the alter ego of Canadian born, Glasgow-based auteur electronic post-punk musician JJD, usually working under the name Soft Riot — with Ostrofti being a non-sensical anagram of the latter. Soft Riot, having released almost a dozen full length releases and played far and wide across Europe, has always had an underlying timelineof releasing more instrumental, cinematic music in tandem with the mutant synth/wave fare he’s more well known for.
Ostrofti’s first proper release was the 2021 Sudden Vision Zones — a four track release running for just under one hour. This release was originally commissioned by the US label MediTape, an imprint label of the larger Sanity Muffin label, with the imprint focussing on more “headspace” music of drones and sonic material that is geared to more zones and meditation. Moving forward a couple of years later, Split Infinitives offers a wider range of sounds over shorter compositions, injecting subtle rhythms and more mechanical counterpoint to the compositions in moods varying from introspection and internal reflection, to subtle feelings of cinematic unease.
Most tracks were written with intuition in mind, with many compositions written in one session, or within a condensed period of time to capture the visual colour and character of each track. Overall Ostrofti is set up as a mechanism to write music in the late night hours as an escape from the trappings of things like culture, scenes, political calamity, information overload, existential dread and the confines of what is considered synthesizer pop music. A fine balance is carefully engineered in the compositions — a balance between creeping dread and melancholy against a sense of finding moments to rest and seek out internal resolve.