OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES

Album review

SOPHIE is one of those artists who inspire fascination right away, as much thanks to the mystery of their personality as the ineffable quality of their sound. We first met her in 2006 on the London label PC Music, and Samuel Long (SOPHIE's real name) was already producing music that was stranger than the output of all the rest of that crew (which is saying something). Her first official sally, Product from 2015, already presented the basics of her musical world, with a side of chiptune, and a dash of kawaii. With a smooth production wrapped in latex, spacey sounds and completely aseptic vocals, the like had never been heard; you'd think you were on a dancefloor, suffocating in a too-tight Batman costume. While the overpoweringly cheesy pop is a crucial component of the "SOPHIE sound", it is completed by an unexpected, metallic, glacial electro with a lightsaber thrum.

Unique, bizarre, extreme, uncompromising, sincere... These are words that come to mind when trying to describe SOPHIE's music in an article in the specialist music press, where people are asking the question:  "Is this the future of electro? That's reasonable when you think of the artists who have made use of her services (Madonna, Charli XCX, Vince Staples, Cashmere Cat…). And, as everyone scrutinised her first album, she took off on a tangent, delivering this protean and inclassifiable record: challenging from the off, twisting in the middle with a long ambient passage, and classic PC music to finish. No, this album is not easily accessible. It could even put listeners off, given the way that it kicks against convention, as a certain Icelandic woman did twenty years ago. But isn't that the point of art? And the mark of great artists? © Sylvain Di Cristo/Qobuz