Sophie Is Gone But Left Behind A Whole New World

Sophie’s music oversaturated, overtook, and in my earliest listenings, it stirred something within my body that I didn’t know existed or, perhaps, didn’t however have the courage to acknowledge. Even before the Glasgow-born producer introduced herself to the world, the sound she developed in anonymity, though entirely computer-generated, had a distinctly visceral quality: It snapped like a rubber musical group, oozed like melting plastic, fizzed like shaken soda. Each single was illustrated with an appropriately artificial graphic of monochromatic tubing, while high-pitched, high-speed vocal modulations proposed that the womanhood she synthesized would be paid for, manufactured in a lab, or ripped from a hard drive.


I was just starting to toy with feminine pronouns any time, right after leaving a job where my neutral ones weren’t respected, a writing assignment brought us with each other. My cover profile in Out magazine’s end-of-year provide would name Sophie Xeon “Artist of the Year” and celebrate her banner 2018, including the release of her only full-length album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, which was nominated for a Grammy the following year, and capped by her first headlining tour. I remember standing in the crowd at her Brooklyn Steel show, watching as she slowly took the stage, wrapped in skintight latex like a doll waiting to be removed from its packaging, wheeling her synth on a stand. The immense power she wielded, to command a packed warehouse to quiver with the touch of a button and the repetitive, mechanized cry of “Take Me to Dubai.” Sophie consistently tested out new music while performing, she would tell me; this was one of multiple tracks she never saw formally released.


Whenever we discussed three days later, it was almost exactly one year to the day that she appeared publicly for the initial time in the video for the earnest ballad “It’s Okay to Cry.” Prior to that, several who were curious about her background presumed the masculine pronoun, including The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as she avoided pictures and enlisted stand-ins to perform in her place. Whenever she did play live, it was from beyond the thick, dim haze of a DJ booth. So imagine the impact as soon as, soon after years of being derided in the press and by fellow artists for “feminine appropriation,” here she was, ditching the signature saccharine modulation for her obviously lower vocal tone, naked however for a cherry pout. And I recognized her; she looked like us. She notified me later it was “just a time any time everything aligned,” though it seemed much less a matter of coming out in the customary sense than stepping into view. “It’s not a completely organic state of being for me to be visible,” she mentioned. “But it’s something I’m learning a lot from — it could be cooperative and nourishing to feel embodied.”


But for those who listened closely, or maybe those who were routinely meant to hear, Sophie’s music sounded trans all along. I started taking estrogen and testosterone blockers a little bit over per year right after our interview, and if my own experience has taught me anything, it’s that transition, despite what some simplified media narratives might have you believe, isn't about the here or there, the before or soon after, nevertheless the method of becoming, the generative opportunities that exist in the ability to adjust your physical self to meet your core, and the changing relationship to the body that inevitably comes with it. I heard that potential in the yearning lyrics of “Immaterial,” the gummy clanking of “MSMSMSM,” the cyborgian erection described in “Hard.” “Faceshopping,” to be sure, was for the ladies. Sophie was a self-taught musician, however she built her own universe from digital particles, a “whole new world,” as one track proposed, repurposing the theme from Disney’s animated Aladdin. I think that’s what Sophie meant if she told Paper that “God is trans.”


Right after a tragic accident in Athens in the early hours of Saturday (January 30), Sophie died at the age of 34. “True to her spirituality,” her publicity organization Modern Matters wrote in a statement, “she had climbed up to watch the entire moon and accidentally slipped and fell.” Reading the news felt as surreal and jarring as her music often did. It sent waves by way of the industry, with fans and collaborators weighing in on social media to express their shock and condolences. FKA Twigs described Sophie as “a star of our generation,” while Finneas wrote that “I noticed myself so routinely inspired by her and in awe of her production.” However perhaps this was just another transition — what bearing could the human form have on a spirit who has already mastered it? I looked back at my interview transcript immediately after waking up to the news. “This medium, your physical self,” I remember her telling me, “your relationship with it may change.”


What cannot be changed nor overstated is the immensity of Sophie’s impact on contemporary pop. She started to reveal her extreme, bubblegum interpretation of electronic music by means of the the mysterious label Numbers in the early 2010s, throughout peak dubstep era. However in just a number of years, her production would shape the sound of the largest artists in the world: from the revving sounds on Charli XCX’s “Vroom Vroom” to Nicki Minaj’s teamwork with the original material girl, “Bitch I’m Madonna.” Her early work with A.G. Cook and the influential London label PC Music gave rise to an entirely new genre. What we right now understand to be hyperpop — a umbrella for the transgressive maximalism of artists like 100 gecs, Rina Sawayama, and Dorian Electra — is a direct descendant of Sophie’s pioneering vision.


Much less than a week prior to the accident, uploaded to Sophie’s YouTube account was a paired-back version of the track “Bipp” by the British duo Autechre, who were major inspirations to Sophie and the only artists she would permit to remix her work; the quiet release of the heavy, pulsating song “Unisil” followed suit several a day or two later. Maybe Sophie was finally prepared to release the music she tested at Brooklyn Steel years back, though that cannot be known. However what can be felt and heard is her legacy. For Sophie, pop music was the greatest communication tool of all, able to reach almost anyone, in any place, without words. Her work pushed the limitations of industry and genre, and while doing so, blurred the barriers between artificiality and reality, highlighting the power of something, a novel concept or a newfound identity, that is self-made. And for me, it sounded like the future.