In the summertime of 2013, the Scottish label Numbers launched a wierd little track referred to as “Bipp.” “I could make you’re feeling higher,” promised the pitch-shifted chipmunk vocals on the hook, atop colourful, sharp manufacturing—an effervescent collision of dubstep, hardcore techno, and home, credited to an artist named Sophie.
Quickly, this mysterious Sophie grew to become affiliated with PC Music, an rising London experimental label who equally used computer-manipulated vocals and eerily shiny imagery to blur the strains between authenticity and digital artifice. Working alongside the label’s ringleader A.G. Cook dinner and artist Hayden Dunham, Sophie winked at pop’s instant-gratification consumerism by launching an vitality drink referred to as QT, which arrived with its personal catchy theme track.
Sophie and PC Music’s conceptual cheekiness could possibly be polarizing, however all concerned events had been clearly brimming with concepts, and shortly sufficient, extra folks needed to play. In 2016, Sophie flirted with the mainstream by producing Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP, a undertaking representing a return to Charli’s club-kid roots. Different high-profile co-signs got here from the likes of rapper Vince Staples, Norwegian producer Cashmere Cat, and the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna. For individuals who understood the potential, Sophie’s imaginative and prescient of the long run was thrilling.
Whereas Sophie’s sonic character was evident from the bounce, her id was largely a thriller to her viewers throughout these early years. She avoided releasing conventional press photos, carried out uncommon interviews completely over electronic mail, and as soon as despatched a buddy to stand-in as “Sophie” for her Boiler Room set (the place the true Sophie was in attendance, disguised as a safety guard). However in late 2017, Sophie emerged together with her first solo music in two years, a ballad referred to as “It’s Okay to Cry.” The track’s cherubic self-directed video marked the primary time that Sophie deliberately appeared on digital camera and introduced that she was a transgender girl. “It’s Okay to Cry” would turn into the opening monitor on Sophie’s Grammy-nominated debut, 2018’s Oil of Each Pearl’s Un-Insides. In between industrial-strength abrasions, the album reveled in lush grandeur, with lyrics relating themes of id, longing, and immateriality.
After the discharge of Oil, Sophie centered on her subsequent file. A serial song-starter, she had an enormous archive to tug from, and meant to cycle between experimental and pop releases. A full-circle second arrived in January 2021: six years after Sophie proclaimed that she had no endurance for remixes of her personal music “until it’s Autechre,” the English digital legends delivered a remix of “Bipp.” Two days later, she was gone. The 34-year-old died in Athens after an unintended fall. A assertion from her labels stated that she had been attempting to get a greater view of a full moon.
It’s simple to be effusive when recalling a life lower tragically brief. However it’s no exaggeration to say that by the point of her demise, Sophie had left her mark on trendy pop. Most not too long ago, the success of Charli XCX’s Brat proved Vroom Vroom’s chromatic bubblegum to be forward-thinking, even when critics on the time had rolled their eyes. However Sophie’s trailblazing went past technical ingenuity. She noticed music as molecular gastronomy, a possibility to please and startle the synapses in curious configurations.
