It's OK to Cry

September 27, 2024 4:56 AM

SOPHIE (yt) Is Gone. Her Music Lives On - "The artist's posthumous album is less an expression of her journey than a guide for the rest of us—a last gift." (previously)

In 2013, a mysterious producer named Sophie released “Bipp,” a minimalist club track that sounded like it had been formed on another planet and squeezed through hyperdrive before arriving on ours. “Bipp” was black space latticed with radically strange objects: a rubbery squelch of a bass beat, a melodic line like a laser coated in latex, percussive punctuation marks that seemed to morph from plasma into steel. Sophie continued releasing singles, each one accompanied by a 3-D rendering of a ladderless slide. The objects looked the way the songs sounded, like uncanny candy—slick, chemical, jaw-breakingly hard...

'My first impression was this person's a genius': the life and legacy of producer pioneer Sophie - "As her posthumous second album is released, her family and collaborators share memories of a producer who saw the future."

In the years prior to her death, Sophie had gone from underground darling to genuine alt-pop star, thanks to her ability to fuse, through generational talent and sheer will, the immediacy of pop with a futuristic vision of experimental music. When she died unexpectedly, slipping while trying to gain a better view of a full moon, tributes poured in across the musical spectrum, from Rihanna and Vince Staples to Arca and Flying Lotus – a breadth of adulation that could only have been earned by someone who had touched the mainstream and the underground.

Posthumous albums are a dime a dozen, and often cash-grabs by opportunistic labels or management teams, but Sophie is, at least to some degree, a complete statement. It’s a bittersweet final transmission from an artist whose textured, avant garde style had an outsized impact on the way pop sounds today – her epochal Charli xcx collaboration Vroom Vroom led to an era of pop that was faster, louder, sexier and sillier than before.

On Sophie's Posthumous Album, a Final Disappearing Act - "Some girls want to be known, while others prefer to remain obscure. Scottish-born singer and producer Sophie was for the girls who wanted to hide behind the mixer board while still crafting their own magic—and Sophie, her posthumous record, attempts to reconcile both of those ideals."

Known for the crunchy, glitchy production on her hard-hitting songs, Sophie cultivated an intensely private public profile, remaining all but unknown beyond her stage name before she came out as trans in 2017. She was a producer, in charge of her own image and sound, yet what she emanated more than anything was a kind of angelic alienism...

Sophie Died in 2021. The Album She Left Behind Is Now Complete. - "'Sophie,' a new LP by the visionary hyperpop producer, traces an arc from introspection to pop pleasures to thoughts of eternity. It will be her final release."

Early in her career, Sophie carefully shrouded herself within her music: D.J.-ing in darkness and evading photographs. But with the lofty 2017 single “It’s OK to Cry” and with “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides,”[1] Sophie exultantly revealed her face, her voice and her identity as a trans woman. In her music, and in extravagant stage productions, Sophie made it clear that she would treat gender as fluidly as sound. One title Sophie had considered for the new album was “Trans Nation,” Benny said.

“An embrace of the essential idea of transness changes everything because it means there’s no longer an expectation based on the body you were born into, or how your life should play out and how it should end,” Sophie told Paper magazine in 2018. “For me, transness is taking control to bring your body more in line with your soul and spirit.”

The tracks on “Sophie” trace a four-part arc; its double-LP release places them on separate vinyl sides. “Sophie” unfolds from somber introspection and noisy abstractions — like the buzzing, ratcheting, whipsawing “Plunging Asymptote” (with the writer and artist Juliana Huxtable), which often sounds like the teeth of a giant comb being strummed — to jubilant pop self-affirmations with titles like “Live in My Truth” and “Exhilarate.” It then moves into the clubland kicks of house and techno, and concludes with reflections on time and eternity.

“Musically, absolutely, this is her,” Emily said. “Her number one thing was hating nostalgia for the sake of it. She was always more excited about the future. And that’s the heartbreaking thing, but also the thing where her music can give me hope that she can be present. I think if this album does anything, it’s about her legacy not being associated with something purely in the past. That’s my real hope. I think that there’s a part of her in the future.”[2]

(via bombastic lowercase pronouncements: "when the world was starting to notice that she was the future of pop.")

also btw...
-PRODUCT
-The Story Of SOPHIE
-SOPHIE - Documentary
-SOPHIE LIVESTREAM HEAV3N SUSPENDED
-SOPHIE: the producer taking pop to the future
-Watch SOPHIE and Sophia the Robot discuss the future of creativity
-SOPHIE — OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES Remix Album | SIDE 2
-SOPHIE @ The Brooklyn Mirage, NYC, 23 June 2018
-The Dome's Protection Ft. Nina Kraviz

Unpredictable reality has become the algorithm that is able to solve a whole series of questions in a single manner... in a single movement.
It's a rule of transformations that allows you to move from one chain of symbols to another.
Look at all the cardinal points.
The future is discovered at the turn of each pathway.
Spheres and lines with invisible dimensions, the future is discovered.
Spheres and lines with invisible dimensions, it is in the place that we tamed the future.
It is in the place that we tamed the future.

Humans have a unique ability for abstract thinking paired with a unique affinity for the past.
After all, lived reality is always a construction of the imagination.
My voice is free falling, trapped in all infinitely dense matter.
My voice is free falling.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Go...
Stop.

An invisible world circulates in another dimension, passengers of another time dimension disembark after long journeys.
You are entering the dome's protection once again... once again.
You are entering the dome's protection once again.
The water now is vanished from your hand.
Human consciousness flows like a stream.
Consciousness is a very rare and precious thing.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Look in front of you.
This is the cradle of your civilization.
This is the cradle of all times.[3]

posted by kliuless (2 comments total)

Thank you I put this on right now.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:02 AM on September 27 [1 favorite]

same!
posted by kokaku at 7:17 AM on September 27