Soft Riot releases new '80s new wave-inspired music video for "Ghostwriter" (post-punk/minimal wave)

The video for “Ghostwriter” took a while to set up and plan — in fact I had intended to finish it up a month or two earlier than when it actually got completed due to a busy schedule with promoting the new Crux and Alter releases as well as many other things going on in my life as I do a lot of things outside of just being “Soft Riot”. Sometimes just the planning before the execution of a project is the step that takes the most time. The video itself can be seen on two levels, the first being the most obvious and that being what the viewer sees. It’s more of a graphic, surrealist collage — somewhat different than a lot of music videos which are generally based on performance of the music or the artist’s own image.

The track, entitled “Ghostwriter”, is based on experiences I had writing Crux whereby a lot of the ideas and inspiration seemed to materialize out of thin air and propelled me along. It was if some unknown force was “ghostwriting” the song and the assembled graphic characters in the video have a “puppet-like” presentation reflecting that, along with any given number of impulsive, subconscious images that I physically created and assembled for this video. There is, however, a second level to this video that’s a little less obvious, and that’s how it was created. In the decade and a half that I’ve been doing Soft Riot, in more recent years I feel like I’ve been increasingly alone in the world of music — and that being because not only to I write and perform the music in what I feel is a sound that seems different in the scene that I’m in, but for the most part I also do all of the graphics, music videos, admin and “promotion” for the project on my own. This increasing feeling of being in an internal bubble has been troubling me more and more over the years in this world of digital isolation, social media and AI.

Coming from a more community background, connecting with people in the physical world over music is important to me and something that I have been putting more and more value on and will be ultimately guided by those values in the years to come. All of the animations in the video have been done by hand in a physical space. This allowed me not only to get off the computer for most of the creation of this video, but also opened up the doors really wide for collaboration with other people in a far more intuitive and inclusive way. This allowed the usage of computer software to be basic and minimal, mainly keying out backgrounds, levels, colourising and layering of the animated footage.

As I feel the world of what I recognize as an underground music scene and community keeps getting more absorbed into the world of statistics, data and marketing that is more in line with late-stage capitalism, it was important for me to focus on things in the real world like working with other people, meeting new ones, connecting with people, traveling and performing live. The digital world as it is today is one that’s planned out, created and orchestrated by the corporations that create them — a far cry from the more utopian possibilities the internet posed when I got acquainted with it in the 90s. The physical world, however, is something that we still don’t know what the purpose of it is yet, despite thousands of years of humans trying to speculate why it exists. Ultimately, the digital world we’ve created can’t exist without the physical world it sits in — not the other way around.

About the video GHOSTWRITER
“Ghostwriter” is the second track from the latest album Crux to get an official promo video — the first official video being the album’s opening track “Moving Out Of The Black” which premiered at the end of April 2026, a couple of weeks before the album’s release date of 15 May 2026. Currently the video for “Ghostwriter” is not public and unlisted as a premiere and date are worked out for the video. All graphics and editing done by JJD (jjdinfo.com). Animations mostly done by hand using physically printed graphics. Background textures and visuals shot from a projector and re-filmed. Assistance provided by Leyre Mann Vadillo.

About the album CRUX

CRUX (released May 2026) is the latest album by Glasgow-based, British-Canadian synth auteur SOFT RIOT, who over the past fifteen years has toured Europe regularly and has released dozens of releases which feature his unique and ever-evolving take on synthesizer post-punk, taking in elements of darkwave, new wave, post-punk, italo and EBM with a sound that brings to mind artists such as Fad Gadget, Prince, early Simple Minds, Skinny Puppy, Bill Nelson as well as the current wave of underground bands working in this overall genre.

With origins in the mid-1990s art-punk/hardcore scene dominating the West Coast American/Canadian underground at the time, JJD has clocked in a few decades of musical output in various bands and projects while being continually active in the musical underground, including first-wave post-punk revivalists RADIO BERLIN (1998-2005) and industrial synth-punk collective A LUNA RED (Gold Standard Labs, 1999-2003) and a myriad of others.

On the surface CRUX is a continuation of SOFT RIOT’s evolution — a singular and intriguing take on elements of classic synthesizer music that seems familiar on the surface, pulling in elements of synth pop, minimal wave, darkwave, new wave, italo, EBM and post-punk by an artist who has been active in many different guises of the ongoing “post-punk revival” since the eve of the turn of the millenium. With that much time involved in an overarching sub-genre and seeing many trends and styles come and go, it has allowed the artist to fine-tune his craft.

SOFT RIOT has toured Europe numerous times over the years, with stages shared with such peers as Absolute Body Control, Front 242, Parade Ground, She Past Away, Test Department, Selofan, Ausgang, Linea Aspera, Drab Majesty, Uncanny Valley, Lebanon Hanover, Qual, Noi Kabát, Robert Görl of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft and many more, as well as appearances at a number of essential festivals in scene including Ombra Festival (ES), BIM Fest (BE), Waveteef (BE), Kalabalik På Tyrolen (SE) and Weird Science (DE).