Sophie, Sophie

British producer Sophie was one of the most influential figures of ’10s pop. She gained a cult following in 2014 with the releases of Bipp and Lemonade – futuristic tracks beamed in from a faraway galaxy, threaded with sounds and textures at once cold and colourful, alien and beguiling. Her ceaseless innovation would eventually have swaths of the pop landscape either imitating her or hitting her up to collaborate. Sophie worked with the likes of Rihanna, Madonna, Vince Staples and Charli XCX; XCX dedicated a song to the producer on her recent world-beating (and thoroughly Sophie-inspired) album Brat.

After years as a recluse Sophie emerged as a glamorous trans woman and instant queer icon in the music video for It’s Okay to Cry, from her stunning 2017 debut solo album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. Her music made more sense than ever, its transgression the clear expression of someone whose art and identity would never fit into rigid binaries.

In Athens in January 2021 Sophie slipped and fell to her death while climbing a balcony to get a better view of the full moon. Her brother and studio manager Benny Long doubtless felt immense pressure to honour her legacy on this eponymous posthumous album. His effort is palpable across the 16-track LP of collaborations, but so is Sophie’s absence on the final cut.

The structure of the record is fairly conventional. The first few tracks conjure black holes in deep space with oppressive, droning sounds lending a funereal quality. By the time Reason Why, featuring Kim Petras and BC Kingdom, arrives in a sheeny spurt of mid-tempo, mid-energy hyperpop, it feels like opening the blinds after days of mourning. The song kicks off a cartoony, playful run of tracks before the record veers into techno territory that’s darker but not aggressively so. Synths pop like artificial gunfire in a video game and, while percussion patterns are militant, the snares are muted, as though the drumstick tips have been coated in cotton wool. Berlin Nightmare and Gallop, featuring Sophie’s former partner Evita Manji, are more anxious and foreboding, the sort of thing that could soundtrack a tense heist in a discerningly scored Payday 2 series.

Exhilarate kicks off the sentimental send-off stretch of the album. It features Bibi Bourelly, who co-wrote Bitch Better Have My Money and whose voice approximates Rihanna’s on an empowerment anthem treated with enough Sophie-esque flourishes – atonal bass blobs, a faint, ever-present buzz – to render it refreshingly weird.

Always and Forever is pastel-toned and gauzy, with Hannah Diamond’s helium coo sending the tribute heavenwards. The yearning, ’80s-indebted production on My Forever is more emotive and, combined with longtime colleague Cecile Believe’s plaintive, clear vocal turn, makes for the record’s most memorable track after Reason Why.

Sophie had already chosen the full track list, and most songs were close to completion, according to Long. He says finishing the album was a matter of “honing” certain sounds he knew Sophie wasn’t happy with, but we’ll never know how it might have sounded if Sophie had been the one doing the honing. Sophie is a painstaking labour of love, but it also feels like a diluted distillation of her essence. You can’t help but suspect that Sophie’s version would have far eclipsed its impact.