If life has managed to instil anything approaching a philosophical ethos within my mental core thus far, it would be that living is as difficult and annoying as it is unpredictable and treacherous, an uncertain passage of time mostly spent waiting for things to happen that fail to do so.

It is a feeling that has taken on a darker dimension over the past eleven months thanks to the prolonged state of social inertness prompted by all this COVID business, reinforced by the grimly humorous irony that the best way to keep your loved ones safe during these unprecedented times is to stay away from them. Of course, thanks to the ever-evolving accessibility of social media, we can fill our respective emotional voids with virtual validation, but it often only serves to make those longeurs spent without connection that much more emotionally isolating. I may have been proactive during these sequential lockdowns in certain regards such as quitting smoking and managing to comfortably fill an XL shirt rather than over-stretch it, but my addiction to people still gives me severe withdrawal pangs every day.

One such social interaction I am missing more than most is that of going to gigs, one of the bigger perks of living in London being that almost every single whistle-stop tour by artists from all over the world involves an impromptu stop here. The whole process of meeting friends at a pub nearby after not having eaten anything since lunch after coming straight from work only to end up downing at least two drinks in time to get in to the venue halfway through the support act slot, which leaves plenty of time to get coats checked in and more drinks bought from the venue’s bar before finding the spot you plan on viewing the main event from for the next two hours, collectively feeding on the giddy anticipation from your gig-mates and the rest of the audience which in turn prompts you to get through both of your drinks far too quickly, only to realize as the house lights dim down to rapturous applause that you are going to have to hold off on that sudden need to use the restroom facilities because AAAAGGGHHHH THERE THEY ARE!!!! Even if the top-billed performers are less-than-special on the night, the communality of the experience between yourself and the other spectators, friends and strangers alike, carries its own unique energy each time, a bespoke buzz that helps get your bleary-eyed, heartburn-suffering self home on pure faith just in time for a single glass of water before collapsing into bed and forgetting to set your alarm for the following morning.

I miss it all, I really do… and I bring this all up because, in-keeping with 2021’s picking up 2020’s half full can of beer and cigarette filters to guzzle down, the album I am exploring in this entry is from an artist whom we are never going to get the chance of having such an experience seeing in such a capacity ever again after their being tragically struck down in the prime of what should have been a long and inspiring career at the forefront of electronic pop music.

F*ck you, 2021.

VINYLLY!

#2: Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides – SOPHIE (2018, MSMSMSM/Future Classic/Transgressive Records, FCL327LP/TRANS368X)

Spotify / Apple

Sophie Xeon’s ascendance into the upper echelons of the dance music scene was one of the most exciting developments of the previous decade, her brand of elasticated beats, whip-smart basslines, sugary synths and over-caffeinated vocals fuelling fervour amongst pop nerds and club kids in its ability to convincingly solicit devilish irony and open-hearted sincerity in equal abundance. Having spent most of her youth studying music and constructing her own studio after being introduced to electronic music by her father as well as developing a refined ear for pop via her mother’s love for disco music, Sophie began releasing singles via local labels based in her native Glasgow in 2013, with her track “BIPP” in particular gaining serious traction amongst music publications in their end-of-year lists. Eventually she caught the ear of fellow avant-electro-pop producer A.G. Cook in the process, leading to their first collaboration, “Hey QT”, an ironic-or-not dance-pop track with elements of Eurobeat and J-Pop over-tweaked to an impish degree, its iridescent insouciance perfectly matched by its video featuring a modelesque avatar miming whilst nonchalantly aerobicizing as they hawk the song’s tie-in soft drink throughout, all bankrolled by über-hip indie label XL Recordings.

Thereafter, a deluge of high-profile production and song-writing assignments found their way into Xeon’s discography, among them a highly regarded EP from fellow future-pop prognosticator Charli XCX and a fabulously bratty single from the one and only Madonna. Despite all this resounding critical and commercial success, Sophie herself remained a somewhat elusive public figure, earlier examples of this secretiveness including her giving radio interviews using a vocal modulator that would make her sound like a young child or hiring a drag performer to mime her DJ set whilst Xeon herself stood to one side disguised as security staff. As slyly playful as all these stunts were, some critics’ knives were beginning to sharpen over the producer’s early “Hello-Kitty-sharting-all-over-the-place” aesthetic becoming too samey with each single, evidenced by the noticeably cooler reception to her 2015 compilation release, PRODUCT, where in a typically glib-bizarro PR decision one special edition of which was released featuring a silicon sex aid. Xeon’s fans remained faithful to the musician’s cause though, and after an extended period of radio silence, in 2017 she gifted them with a single that registers as one of the single most poignant and inspirational reveals in pop music history.

Though Sophie had been making appearances in other pop colleagues’ music videos before this, “It’s Okay To Cry” felt like an artist finally emerging from their cocoon and presenting themselves to the world for the first time, a poignant power ballad built from twinkling arpeggios and distorted electronic crashes that provide a lush soundtrack to Xeon’s emotionally tremulous vocals, the tone cautious and conciliatory until eventually the rumbling clouds burst with joyful catharsis powered by neon-bright power chords and frenetic lightning bolt flashes blasting skywards. The accompanying visuals further heighten the song’s impact, essentially being a performance video featuring its progenitor front and centre in a single medium-close-up take until the song’s celebratory climax, at first unable to hold the camera’s gaze but gradually thawing and revealing more of herself with a sereneness at once timid and playful, appearing to levitate into the stratosphere before finally dancing in the rain with richly deserved sensual abandon. Nothing she had released before had been this bold, forthright and moving, and its importance in the legacy of LGBTQ+ art cannot be overstated; with this clip Sophie was able to stake out a thrilling new territory for artists everywhere in being able to take charge of her own narrative as a proud trans woman, especially after years of needling by the press and fellow musicians over her identity and inclinations.

Two more singles that cowed more to Xeon’s established electro-warped ethos followed before the album’s release, but were no less substantial for their stylistic adherence; “Ponyboy”, a sexed-up romp that beefs up Sophie’s signature sound with a crunchy electroclash groove and synthesised yelps, and “Faceshopping”, a savage critique on commercialized self-actualization disguised as a demented floor-filler full of pummelling beats and tortured screeches bolstered by a gorgeous middle-eight of melismatic drama courtesy of Sophie’s key cohort on Oil, vocalist Cecile Believe, enhancing the dancefloor drama splendidly with her breathless intonations. After the beatific introduction of “Cry”, these two cuts help to frontload the album with a synthetic bombast more formidably robust than what had been previously heard in Xeon’s work, her customary bass ripples, laser-precise signatures and metallic synths all turned up to maximum volume as if they had each been injected with some form of audio-based steroids. As successful as these songs were in whetting appetites for the album before its release though, in hindsight you could argue that they do not quite accurately represent how musically diverse and rich in atmosphere Sophie’s premier experiment in the long-player format is.

Straight after the three singles the listener is dropped into a sumptuous existential quagmire on “Is It Cold In The Water?”, a stunning treatise on trepidation that helps to carve a new niche into Sophie’s oeuvre, using her chicaning synths, soft bass distortions and an operatic vocal from Believe to create a mood piece that is pure slow-build anxiety. Thereafter, “Infatuation” impresses further in giving Sophie a chance to put her unique spin on the loved-up R&B slow-jam, complete with a Prince-style guitar line duly tweaked and pitch-shifted just enough to exist within her sonic universe; ditto for “Pretending”, the album’s darkest moment featuring what sounds like Xeon running a full orchestra through a crushing wall of digital defragmentation to create an intensely sublime piece of tortured beauty. Things perk back up with “Immaterial”, whose joyful bounce and positive lyrics easily classify as the album’s most irrepressibly giddy pop moment, a last blast of bliss before the double-track closer “Whole New World/Pretend World” comes in to draw things to an ambiguous close, the finale collating all the album’s themes of identity and self-discovery into a fraught, ravey mêlée that suggests a darker future ahead for the sonic sanctuary that its creator has divined, which has now been bestowed with an even more devastating weight in lieu of Xeon’s tragic passing.

Oil was released in June 2018 to universal acclaim from critics and managed to score a Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album, helping to further cement Sophie’s status as one of the most innovative and exciting musicians of her time as well as provide the LGBTQ community with a vital new avenue of visibility in the music industry. And aside from an amazing remix double-album and a virtual live set streamed onto YouTube, it would be the last piece of work that Xeon would see released in her lifetime. Though it is unlikely that someone as collaborative and well-liked as Xeon doesn’t have scores of unreleased material secreted away somewhere, the prospect of them becoming available to the public carries an air of questionability; considering that all of Sophie’s work was invested with such a vibrant sense of uniqueness and released expressly on her own terms, with her being as much in charge of the visuals and presentational formats as the music itself, any future releases missing her physical presence almost feels like a betrayal of the creator’s personal dogma displayed throughout her art. For right now though, we can take some solace in the knowledge that as early as album number one, Sophie Xeon was able to create the kind of fully realised world most musicians can only dream of achieving, a truly idiosyncratic celebration of self and integrity that solidified their reputation as a pioneering creative force who blazed a trail for others like her to follow.

Thank you so much for all of your work, Sophie, you will be missed… xxxo