With the exception of Matthew Herbert's stridently anticapitalist missives, postmillennial electronic music has largely steered clear of the political realm, ceding that ground to voice-centred genres like rock and hip-hop. For most computer-based artists, politics is an especially tricky subject; because so many of them are making instrumental music, it seems absurd to demand that any individual producer confront such matters head on. But if none of them are willing to delve into that realm, it opens up the entire genre to charges of turning its back on the real world.

As one of the few international laptop artists making explicitly political music, Montreal's Scott Monteith (aka Deadbeat) has spent a lot of time thinking about how best to channel his social views. On this year's New World Observer, the Kitchener native manages that feat in various ways, most obviously in the names given to songs like "Abu Ghraib" and "Little Town of Bethlehem". Listening to those tracks-both prime examples of the shapeshifting micro-dub Deadbeat has been crafting since 2001's Primordia-the relationship between the music and the song titles is not always apparent, a fact that has caused some critics to accuse him of superficial grandstanding.

"Yeah, I've heard that one before," says Monteith, reached at his Montreal home. "I had a really interesting conversation with a friend of mine about two months after the album came out where he said, 'What are you doing here? It's all well and good that you're making some kind of personal protest, but without any vocal content, aren't these all ultimately empty references?"

Over time, Monteith has come to believe that his song titles are justified by the mere fact that they have provoked discussion around important issues. He goes on to point out that several of the album's tracks contain explicitly political sounds but that these are detectable only upon close inspection. This is especially true of the aforementioned "Abu Ghraib", which begins with a corroded recording of right-wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh comparing military-prison abuse to fraternity hazing rituals. After a few more seconds of that nonsense, the composer cuts off the recording by intoning the words "fuck off", thereafter developing the track as a kind of funereal march in the key of dub.

Elsewhere, Monteith calls on the assistance of a female singer named Athesia to provide her elliptical lyrics to songs like "Port-Au-Prince" and "Ruination". For the programmer, who composes all his tracks exclusively on the computer, working with a vocal collaborator presented a fresh batch of challenges.

"It was amazing to have that new source of sound but at the same time, totally frustrating, because when you're dealing with samples or virtual instruments, you never have to do 14 takes," argues Monteith, who appears as part of the New Forms Festival on Friday (September 23) at Open Studios (252 East 1st Avenue). "A software instrument never does anything but exactly what you tell it to do, but the human voice is another matter altogether."

Frustrations aside, the producer is pleased with those first vocal experiments, and points to his recent remix of rapper Saul Williams's "Black Stacey" as another sign of his interest in the medium. And with a political firebrand like Williams by his side, Monteith's sincerity is simply no longer a matter for debate.