RIP SOPHIE, Who Was Always Going To Be The Future Of Electronic Music
The Bleeding Edge Producer Has Died At 34
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella
Tristan Young @talltristan
Last night the pioneering electronic producer SOPHIE died. In what is being reported as a freak climbing accident in Athens Greece, where she was living at the time, the music industry has lost one if its most unique and progressive figures- not just in terms of her politics but her vision for genre. Since the early 2010s SOPHIE merged hi intensity pop with angular and edgy disortions. Far from being a mere provocateur of glitch electronica, SOPHIE’s interpretations and reimagining of where pop and more avant-garde froms of industrial electronica could intersect took the entire community by surprise. Her arrangements were jarring and epileptic at times but also exuded an exotic kind of grace and luxury that fell outside of the parameters of our traditional understanding of such things.
SOPHIE initially was, and remained until the end, an enigmatic figure. The artist elected for a time to avoid any use of pro nouns or gendered identifiers, but stepped more into the spotlight as a trans artist later into her career. A string of singles and EPs including the kinetic rush Vyzee lead up to the release of her debut LP, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. It was an album of staggering complexity and atypical beauty, one where blunt and visceral instrumentation interlaced with ornate grandure and seductive intrigue far more naturally than one may expect. The album was an empathetic and celebratory examination on the evolution of our concept of gender and how the ambiguities that remain effect those that had no choice to consider such things long before most of us. It had a number of expansive highlights including the simmering modern masterpiece Is It Cold In The Water? There will never be another artist like SOPHIE, but because of her the path way for whoever comes next is more clear and open than it ever could have been without her.