In 2013, Scottish musician Sophie Xeon broke through with “BIPP,” a jolt of sugary synth-pop that sounded like nothing else in the ever-expanding realm of music. It felt like a transmission from a post-societal future, a surrealistic vision of popular music from the perspective of pleasure-centric cyborgs. Even padded in candied silicone, the disembodied, pitched-up refrain, “I can make you feel better,” registered as a demand, an order of surrender to a near-lethal dose of endorphins.
Gone far too soon, SOPHIE fell to her death early early yesterday morning in Athens, Greece, reportedly having climbed up to the roof to watch the full moon. It’s a shocking loss that immediately sent a ripple of mourning through the electronic music community. Xeon had been fairly quiet since her full-length debut, OIL OF EVERY PEARLS UN-INSIDES, landed in 2017, but her influence raged on, even in her relative absence. The post-genre tag “hyperpop” came into full prevalence last year, its sound a further mutation of an aesthetic pioneered by the A.G. Cook-headed, SOPHIE-affiliated collective PC Music. In the scope of hyperpop’s explosion into mainstream consciousness, it would be remiss not to pay the cutting-edge essence of PC Music its hard-earned dues.
The collective’s early work was modeled on the crisp, neon packaging of an inflated, apocalyptic consumerism - SOPHIE’s early successes included “Hey QT,” a Cook collaboration that doubled as a sponsorship for an energy drink, and “Lemonade,” which squeezed its way into a 2015 McDonald’s commercial with unsettling prescience. This lean towards the purposefully artificial made her sole full-length an unexpected turn - OIL was an expansive, all-encompassing statement that captured each of her microcosmic worlds in peak form. Highlight “Ponyboy” was a tongue-in-cheek inversion of the gender dynamics inherent to sexual objectification, and “Immaterial” juxtaposed a cold, synthetic universe with one of full of boundless possibility. More radically, “Is It Cold In The Water?” and “Pretending” totally collapsed the structure of her sound, stretching chilly arpeggios and wispy pads into gaping soundscapes.
SOPHIE’s art has immeasurably shifted the course of electronic music, and the outpouring of sorrow and remembrance from musicians and collaborators has been overwhelming. But her loss will arguably be felt the hardest in queer circles - as a trans woman, Xeon’s rise represented a sea change in the visibility of LGBTQ+ individuals in music. A hard turn from the hyper-masculine bro-step phenomenon of the early ‘10s, her work was deeply sensitive, porous with emotion even at its most bracingly industrial. In what will likely become the anthemic embodiment of her legacy, 2017’s “It’s Okay To Cry” came tethered to the first presentation of the artist’s face, and its defiant expression of self-acceptance ushered in a softer, more inclusive era for contemporary electronic. The song is a hard listen on this day in particular, but its push towards tenderness and its embrace of grief will live on as a testament to the gentle humanity at the core of SOPHIE’s legacy.