My counter-cultural musical alter-ego.
Since late 2024 I've been working on this project that blends electronic-dance-pop elements with quite serious spoken words on a range of socio-political topics. The project was born out of a frustration that the 'overton window' (the range of political ideas that are deemed acceptable in mainstream discourse) had shifted so much to the right. The idea was to seed ideas that challenged the neo-liberal hegemony using deliberately accessible pop / dance music as the delivery mechanism.
With the calamitous future we are assuring the human race by continuing with 'business as usual' in the interests of profit, the need for counter-action has never been more urgent. But with the mainstream media essentially captured by the right wing, arguments that challenge the status quo are not reaching the people who need to hear them.
To date, Dissident Sound Lab has had three low-key releases, an EP (The Price Is Right) and two singles (Infinity and Beyond and Work Will Make You Free). All are available on the usual media streaming platforms: YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music and so on.
Now I'm starting to get a reasonable body of work under this artist name, I'm also going to be looking at getting some marketing and promotion, or possibly getting the support of a record label.
The four-track EP Easy Beats for Easy People is scheduled for release in September 2025.
In addition, I've got a brace of tracks that don't feel aesthetically-aligned with the others. They were all born out of a deliberate referencing of the sound world of 70s / 80s disco – shimmering electric pianos, strings, real drums and bass – with guitar licks more at the forefront.
They really came about as what seemed like a natural extension of some of things going on in 'Money is Too Important...'. But while 'Money...' still sounds like electronic dance, these sound too much pop pastiche to go on the same record. So, potentially these are also lined up for a separate release, if that's not too confusing.
In today's media landscape, video content is crucially important. I'm a little constrained by budget, skill set, and the fact that I don't want to actually appear in an identifiable way, but I'm pretty pleased with the ones I've made so far – the two singles and title track of the first EP.
Please follow Dissident Sound Lab on your music / media app of choice: