Overview
RELEASE DATE : 07 October 2024
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. Where Soft Riot has offered the world his own unique take on the synth, wave and post-punk genres, has also always had an underlying timeline of releasing more instrumental, cinematic music which is where the Ostrofti name comes into play.
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, with 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.
These eight, new unreleased tracks set for Split Infinitives were sketched at random intervals in 2023 while work was done in releasing and promoting the new Soft Riot album No., with the majority of the composition and mixing work done in three weeks in late December 2023 and early January 2024 in a gap of writing material for Soft Riot‘s main release timeline, with a few additional instruments re-recorded throughout spring 2024.
Key releases in this timeline include 2014’s Some More Terror and 2020’s Chin Up under the Soft Riot name. However, in recent years the conscious decision to use a separate new name for his more atmospheric compositions came with the release of Sudden Vision Zones.
The artist selecting other artists that might be points of listener reference: Labradford, Robert Rich, Pauline Anne Strom, György Ligeti, Caroline K, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Ike Yard, Eduard Artimiyev, Bruce Gilbert, K Leimer, Spleen and Ideal-era Dead Can Dance, Rubicon-era Tangerine Dream, Philospher’s Stone, Zoviet France, Steve Roach.
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