Soft Riot completes ‘Ghostwriter’ video from ‘Crux’
Soft Riot has finished a video for “Ghostwriter,” the closing track on the 2026 album “Crux,” its second official video from the record.
Soft Riot has finished a video for “Ghostwriter,” the closing track on the 2026 album “Crux.” It is the project’s second official video from the record, following “Moving Out Of The Black,” which premiered at the end of April 2026 ahead of the album’s release on 15 May. A premiere date for “Ghostwriter” itself is still being finalised; the video is not yet public.
Jack Duckworth, who records as Soft Riot and is also known as JJD, built the video’s visuals as a graphic, surrealist collage rather than a straight performance piece, with puppet-like character animation reflecting the song’s theme: the sense of ideas for “Crux” materialising, as though something unseen were “ghostwriting” the record. All of the animation was made by hand from physically printed graphics and re-filmed projected textures, a deliberate move away from computer-based tools that Duckworth has linked to feeling increasingly isolated within the digital side of underground music. Duckworth handled all graphics and editing as JJD, with assistance from Leyre Mann Vadillo.
“Ghostwriter” closes a nine-track album written and recorded across several sessions between June 2024 and January 2026 at Studio Carillon in Glasgow, with vinyl mixing by Owen Pratt at Flesh And Bone Studios in Tarn, France, and mastering by Josh Stevenson at Otic Mastering. “Crux” is available on streaming platforms, as a download through Bandcamp and Subvert via Possession Records, and on vinyl and digipak CD, including a limited clear vinyl LP on Minimal Kombinat that sold out within a week of pre-orders. A follow-up EP, “Alter,” released in June 2026, carries exclusive, alternate and extended versions of “Crux” material.
About Soft Riot
Soft Riot is the synth project of Jack Duckworth, a British-Canadian musician based in Glasgow who has released music under the name for around fifteen years, drawing on synth post-punk, darkwave, new wave, Italo and EBM. Duckworth’s roots go back to the mid-1990s art-punk and hardcore scene on the North American west coast, where he played in the first-wave post-punk revival band Radio Berlin (1998-2005) and the industrial synth-punk group A Luna Red (Gold Standard Labs, 1999-2003). As Soft Riot, he has toured Europe repeatedly, sharing stages with acts including Front 242, Absolute Body Control, Parade Ground, She Past Away, Test Department, Selofan, Drab Majesty and Lebanon Hanover, and has played festivals including Ombra Festival in Spain, BIM Fest and Waveteef in Belgium, Kalabalik PÃ¥ Tyrolen in Sweden and Weird Science in Germany. Side-Line has previously covered the Soft Riot albums “You Never Know What Might Come Next” (2016), “The Outsider In The Mirrors” (2018) and “When Push Comes To Shove” (2019), followed by “No.” (2023) and, in 2026, “Crux” and its “Alter” companion EP.
Support Side-Line
More people read Side-Line than ever, and there is still no paywall and no advertising. Readers pay for it instead - from $5 a month.
Why we ask
Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations we have not put up a paywall, and we refuse to add annoying advertising, so we need to ask for your help. Side-Line’s independent journalism takes time, money and hard work to produce, and we do it to push the artists we like, who are equally fighting to survive.
Handled by PayPal.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
