Miserylab is a music project of Porl King, formed in the late 1990s after the disbanding of Rosetta Stone in 1998.
History
Miserylab was originally conceived as a moniker for remix and production purposes, such as work that King had done for My Vitriol and the Mercury Music Award-winning Elbow. The name was originally spelled "misery:lab", but King chose to remove the colon to make it easier to find in Internet search engines. The name can be seen as both a serious comment on animal experimentation and a self-deprecating comment on King and his musical output. A number of tracks were written in 2000, but were not released whilst production work remained the priority.
Music
Early years and first releases (2005–2009)
In 2005, King created a profile on MySpace, reworking and uploading some of his early miserylab material. In 2007, four of these tracks were made available as a free download, complete with downloadable artwork, known as the Vaporware EP.
Encouraged by a positive response, and with the successful relocation of his home studio to Leeds, King began writing the full-length Function Creep in November 2007. Released in April 2008 as both a download and limited-edition CD, the album had a more guitar-driven, post-punk feel than did the previous EP. King had a preference for download-only releases, only making Function Creep available as a CD following requests for physical version. Function Creep was immediately followed by a downloadable extended version of the track "Be There Tomorrow."
A second album, A Death That We Can Cure, was released on 5 November 2008. (It was consciously released on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot). The unusual title is a Bushism. A graph on the back cover shows that many more people die of starvation than as a result of terrorism.
A third album, Freedom Is Work, was released in May 2009. Around the same time, King was approached by a Russian record label, which resulted in the release of a compilation album in Russia in August that year. Lab Samples compiled a selection of tracks from the first two albums, plus "No Cure For Life" from the Vaporware EP.
From Which No Light Escapes and Void of Life (2010–2011) From Which No Light Escapes, the fourth album, was released in February 2011. During its creation, many of the lyrics were scrapped and replaced to better reflect the events of 2010, and the album title also changed. The track "Downplay" was made available for preview via the miserylab Facebook page. An additional three tracks from the album's recording session—"Futile", "Machines" and "Heart"—were posted two months later on the audio distribution site SoundCloud, under the name From Which No Light Out-Takes. The Terrorizer magazine supplement Dominion gave the album a positive review, comparing the sound to that of Joy Division and early Killing Joke. Glass magazine described it as eloquent and dark, with a "defined maturity in the songs." They also detected a stronger new wave influence than was present on early miserylab albums, and discussed the album's social commentary.
On 18 May 2011, miserylab's single "Appeal to Fears" was made available for preview via SoundCloud. The track includes Kathryn Woolley as a backup vocalist. It was officially released to the public via miserylab's official website on 19 May 2011.
The track "Gods Amongst Your Friends", a track that Porl had decided to not include in the fifth album, was released on 7 June 2011. The track also includes backup vocals by Woolley.
The first track, "Children of the Poor", from miserylab's fifth album was released on 21 July 2011 as a free digital download. An accompanying video was also released on YouTube. Describing a disenfranchised youth ignored by a political elite, the song preceded the 2011 England riots by a matter of weeks. The track was also used by footwear retailer Schuh in its 30th-anniversary advertising campaign, which began on 22 August 2011.
The limited-edition Void of Life album became available for order between 9 and 15 October 2011, and was manufactured and shipped by the end of the month. An extended remix of "Children of the Poor" was made available for download with all orders, and the album was preceded by a promotional video for a new track, "People".