Drew Daniel, the chameleonic programmer and provocateur known as The Soft Pink Truth, has announced his lavish new album, Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?, arriving January 30th, 2026 via Thrill Jockey. The project, emerging from the mind of the Matmos member and Johns Hopkins professor, grafts the formal structures of chamber music onto the foundations of the electronic dance floor.
The album is introduced by the lead single, “Time Inside the Violet,” a piece that exemplifies this new hybrid sound. The track, which features a central piano figure by M.C. Schmidt arranged for strings by Ulas Kurugullu, explores the “emotional turbulence” of time’s passage. Daniel notes the composition captures a feeling of “calm beauty interrupted by panic,” a concept visualized in the accompanying video collaboration between animators Matthew Sullivan and Vicki Bennett.
Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? was crafted with an international cast of collaborators from Turkey, Sweden, Italy, and the US, including harpists, woodwind players, and the Ebu String Quartet from the Peabody Institute.
Conceptually, the album confronts a “dystopian contemporary landscape.” Daniel uses the music to question what solace beauty can offer “in the face of the rising tides of fascism, authoritarianism, cruelty and genocide.” While acknowledging music’s limitations as a political tool, the album functions as an act of defiance, embracing “intimacy, community and unapologetic beauty” as counterpoints to a damaged present. It seeks to provide a “makeshift queer refuge,” marking a surprisingly delicate and vulnerable metamorphosis for the restless musical deviant.
The album features guest performances by a litany of artists from around the world, including: String player & arranger Ulas Kurugullu, guitarist Bill Orcutt, harpists Neleta Ortiz and Cecilia Cuccolini, keyboardists Koye Berry and M.C. Schmidt, the Ebu String Quartet from the Peabody Institute, upright bassists Lorenzo Buffa and Zach Rowden of the noise duo Tongue Depressor, vocalist Helen Spencer Wallace, woodwind players Brandon Wilkins, Evelyn Frances, and Felipe Sosa, cellist Alejandro Quiles, saxophonists Andrew Bernstein of Horse Lords and Nicklas Dahlin, trumpeter Elin Andersson, french hornist Filippo Tramo, and trombonist Simon Fransman.
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