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Mat Ward's latest album, Take the Rad Pill, fuses future bass, drum and bass, punk, electronic dance music and politics for a different sound.

Ward has released nine albums since 2017, covering themes such as surveillance, the media, and the climate crisis. He also produced the G.O.D. EP by his friend and collaborator, Provocalz.

When he’s not producing his own music, Ward writes a monthly music column for һƷ̽��, wrapping up new music releases relating to current political news. He is also an author, and wrote , which features interviews with more than 30 artists, including Briggs, Dobby, Lady Lash, Miss Hood, King Brown, Provocalz and veteran rapper Munkimuk.

Ward told GL when Real Talk was released: “I got into this music when I started listening to Munk's Indigenous Hip-Hop Radio Show on Koori Radio a few years ago. I was astounded by the quality of the music and the knowledge in the lyrics. It was essentially raw protest music — and world class.

“I started interviewing the Indigenous hip-hop artists because I was already doing voluntary work for һƷ̽��, which prides itself on printing what the mainstream media won't. The artists were basically being ignored elsewhere, yet they had so much to say, so it was a natural fit.”

Take the Rad Pill features the radio-rotated tracks "I Wanna Be Like Violet CoCo", "Bruce Is Snorting A Line" and "Your Vote's A Joke".

The album's title is a play on the alt-right's exhortation to "take the red pill", replacing it instead with more radical thoughts.

Ward said most of the songs on his new album are inspired by reading GL. “One that sticks out in particular is the song ‘PwC — Prison Waits For Criminals’.

“I'd read all about the PricewaterhouseCoopers tax-dodging scandal in the corporate media. But when I listened to an interview GL's Suzanne James did about it with non-corporate journalist Michael West while cycling, I nearly fell off my bike. It was only the controlled expression of outrage in that interview that made me write that song."

Similarly, “I Wanna Be Like Violet CoCo”, was inspired by reading about the climate activist in GL.

“I was aware of only a few things about her. I knew that she had packed up her own business to become a climate activist. I knew that she had made headlines worldwide by stopping a truck to hold up traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And I knew that she had served jail time for that protest.

“When I sent Violet the album the other day, she said her friends in Adelaide had played the song when she was recently jailed again.

“On a more basic level, this is the only album of mine that blends punk with house music.”

"Bruce Is Snorting A Line" is about political staffer and tobacco lobbyist Bruce Lehrmann’s drug use. “Your Vote’s a Joke”, a catchy song about how MPs can’t be trusted and the limitations of “democracy” in a capitalist system, “was actually inspired by an interview I did for GL with Patrick Chalmers, a former Reuters journalist who became an activist for accountable democracy", said Ward.

“The basic idea behind the song is that if you live in a democracy, you're lucky. But then why do so many people in democracies hate politics and politicians? I'd say a big reason is that they're allowed to break their promises as soon as they're elected."

Ward wrote “She’s Fighting On”, which celebrates the women fighters of Rojava in North-East Syria, in response to what he describes as a “worldwide war on women”.

“These women [fighters] are not only inspiring because they're survivors, fighting back and winning, but also because they're building probably the world's only feminist, ecosocialist society at the same time. It's just mind-blowing.

“On a more personal level, I hate men who abuse women, as all men should."

Ward said many of his son’s peers “are fans of viral misogynist Andrew Tate” and that “much of the responsibility lies with men to change the worldwide war on women”.

“How much of a hardship is it to do something like that? Compared with what the women of Rojava are going through, it's no hardship at all.”

Ward said his motivation for writing “Musk and Murdoch” — a bonus track on the Bandcamp version of the album — was because “I'm oddly fascinated by Elon Musk, so I've closely watched his political trajectory from being a 'darling of the left' to a MAGA monster.

“It reminded me of Rupert Murdoch's life story. He was seen as a ‘lefty’ at Oxford University and started out his newspaper career in Adelaide as a campaigning editor who saved an Aboriginal man from the gallows. I'd actually already written the chorus to ‘Musk and Murdoch’ before they were photographed . It was like old right-wing media passing the baton to new right-wing media, with Musk now the owner of X."

When I asked what danger the corporate media poses, Ward said that commercial interests mean “they present themselves as unbiased and most of their audience members believe it".

“I wrote a whole concept album about it called Filter Bubble. That album was inspired by award-winning media analysts Media Lens, who often use my music in their videos and articulate the dangers of corporate media far better than I can."

As for whether radical media projects such as GL can survive the onslaught, Ward said: “Fortunately, young people these days are far more questioning of the media, so they do not balk at a media outlet like һƷ̽�� honestly declaring its bias, as all media outlets should.”

[Take the Rad Pill is  and can be downloaded for free on .]