The Soft Pink Truth project is a transformation machine, and the name suggests it: genres with masculine connotations have been put through the electronic grinder with a certain tender touch. On DO YOU WANT NEW WAVE OR DO YOU WANT THE SOFT PINK TRUTH it was punk and hardcore, on WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE? Black Metal. Everything became soft and queer and funny in the playful hands of Drew Daniel. And yet you could still recognize the originals that were transferred here to Housetracks.
On the new album CAN SUCH DELIGHTFUL TIMES GO ON FOREVER? Daniel, otherwise one half of the Dadaist concept factory Matmos, takes on chamber music and string music. But the sweet surface is broken again and again. “Mere Survival Is Not Enough” and “And By And By A Cloud Takes It All Away” initially spread a very velvety and sugary feel. But actually it’s all too much. Deconstruction through overaffirmation.
Other pieces are immediately decomposing. The ten-minute “Phrygian Ganimede” messes up the beautiful surface with improvisational techniques. “Time Inside The Violet” sinks into noise. The pathos becomes CAN SUCH DELIGHTFUL TIMES GO ON FOREVER? porous, kitsch will eat itself, so to speak. So the answer to the question posed by the album title is: No.
This review appears in Musikexpress 2/2026.
