Overview
“The Garden Party / Read You Like An Electronic Book” is Soft Riot‘s contribution to the Everything Is Chemical virtual 7″ series. These are two tracks that were put aside during the writing and production of the most recent Soft Riot album, Fiction Prediction. They have been unearthed for this EIC release to put them out there for the general listening public.
“The Garden Party” is an old track that has been through several versions and has pre-dated all the songs on the full Fiction Prediction album. Composition work on this track started in the spring of 2011 in where it was a more ambient sounding piece with an actual vocal track. The concept behind the track was to be a vignette of a garden party playing with the idea of contrasts of a party that’s civilised but also messy and hedonistic and the music a contrast of euphoria with a sinister undertone. It was sort of a tribute to any given number of parties that were attended in this lifetime, where everyone is enjoying themselves but also trying to escape some unrest in their own lives.
This song never really got into a form that worked in the production phase, as well as never quite allowing for the lyrics and vocals to fit the way that was sought out for them so the track was shelved for a long time until recently, where the track got a bit of a more beat-driven makeover. In the end it was kept as an instrumental as it seemed to work better that way, providing some sort of mysterious soundtrack to a garden party somewhere where the listener can fill in their own storyline to the music.
“Read You Like An Electronic Book” was originally on the Hyperbolic Masses demo CD (a different tracklisting than the actual cassette release) that was sent out to various labels in the fall of 2011, which lead to the Another Drone In Your Head EP on Tundra Dubs that was released in February 2012. This track is more of a cosmic, psychedelic dirge than the other songs and didn’t really fit the mould. The version on this release is the original recording used on the original Hyperbolic Masses demo CD.