Miserylab

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miserylab is the main music project of Porl King, formed after the disbanding of Rosetta Stone in the late 1990s.

King originally conceived miserylab as a moniker for remix and production purposes, such as work done for My Vitriol and the Mercury Music Award nominated Elbow. A number of tracks were written in 2000, but were not released whilst production work remained the priority.

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.

Enthused by a positive response, and 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, it had a more guitar-driven, post-punk feel than the previous EP. Function Creep was immediately followed by a downloadable single, an extended version of the track Be There Tomorrow.

King is now working on a second album, intended to be released on September 11th, 2008.

Lyrically miserylab is sociopolitical. Subjects covered include capitalism and corporate greed, animal rights, and the control exerted by the mainstream media over the general public.

Porl King has a preference for download-only releases, only making Function Creep available as a CD following requests from fans for a “hard copy”. Suffering from social anxiety, he has stated on numerous occasions that miserylab will never perform live.

The project was originally spelt “misery:lab” – but King chose to remove the colon in order to make it easier to find in Internet search engines^[1]. The name can be seen as both a serious comment on animal experimentation, and a self-deprecating comment on himself and his musical output. Claiming to be a “medicated follower of fashion” (a tongue-in-cheek Kinks reference), he comments: “I’m drugged-up to the eyeballs on maximum dose Cipralex – and it has little effect.^[2]”

[edit] Discography

Vaporware EP download EP (Carbon Neutral Digital, July 2007)
Function Creep CD album/download album (Carbon Neutral Digital, April 2008)
Be There Tomorrow (Extended Version) download single (Carbon Neutral Digital, May 2008)