- Consummate producer Sophie is releasing her official debut album through Transgressive Records. Associated with PC Music and Numbers, she has also produced music for the likes of Charli XCX, Vince Staples and Le1f. While her first album length release was a collection of singles, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides is to my mind a flawless album experience.
It’s Okay To Cry was my first taste. It’s an affirmative pop track, Sophie taking the lead vocal line (the first time she has done so to my knowledge – at least in any overt way). The video clip was a bold step too, revealing herself on video for the first time in an undeniably intimate fashion. Infatuation is another slice of pop subversion, starting off with spectral synths and those signature processed vocals. While it builds, it’s almost totally devoid of percussion, a kick being totally absent. Immaterial is a joyous pop banger, akin to the singles from the previous record, immediately bringing Madonna to mind (duh).
These moments of pop euphoria are tempered by industrial noise. Pony Boy and Faceshopping were the second and third singles respectively. They’re both harsh dance tracks with guttural digital synthesis and amazing poppy bridges that come out of nowhere. Is It Cold In The Water? is a personal favourite, a evocative song with lush synths and vocals, again beatless. It’s somewhat like Just Like We Never Said Goodbye (from the first record), but taken a few steps further. Not Okay totally floored me too – an ominous minute and a half long track with devastating production. A bass tone thunders throughout while orchestra hits and vocal snippets cascade around. Pretending is an interesting departure, sounding like a top-forty track stretched and screwed into dark ambience. The nine minute long album closer Whole New World:Pretend World is mad too, heavy beats dissolving to ambience.
Sophie has realised her artistic vision. It's the perfect development of her production, maintaining that tension between the sonics of popular dance music and uncompromising FM Synthesis. Like a twenty-first century incarnation of Psychic TV / Genesis / Throbbing Gristle, Sophie moves effortlessly between the mainstream and experimental, sounding contemporary and classic simultaneously.
- Hillfolk.