By Ifan Llewelyn
There are very few London venues that have conjured up such a lore as Fabric, which for almost two decades has been a haven for clubbers who take their music seriously. Now living in a culture that sincerely considers the manufactured nature of music production, the dark stage was set for an artist who has capitalised and thrived on gesturing directly to the artificiality of production. Fresh out of her plastic wrapping, SOPHIE emerged statuesque and solid, framed by music stands and her dancers, poised to start playing.
Dressed as an Upper East Side second wife, toiling her pearls between her extended fingers, she looked rather out of place in the industrial concrete setting. Nevertheless, SOPHIE transfixes the gaze as she eases herself into the mix, hands delicately playing on the adjacent decks, her beats issued out announcing her arrival, much to the delectation of her adoring crowd. The juxtaposed ethos of SOPHIE’s music translated directly to those who turned up to see her. Genderqueer teenagers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with laddish DJ enthusiasts who came to mosh. Her music’s appeal lies in its tactile nature, that intermixes popping bubbles and latex squeaks with heavy beats, appealing to an infantile sense of texture.
There was a sense that after being given an album of arias, in performance she delivered more of a recitative that didn’t quite deliver the satisfaction you might get from any other artist in concert – but SOPHIE isn’t any other artist. Had she gone up and performed her album from start to finish, she would have compromised her expressive integrity, and we wouldn’t have been privy to those moments of visceral pleasure that issue from her spontaneity. Though a little too fond of a sharp rallentando in her beats, which pulled focus a few too many times during the performance, she proved mastery in dumbfounding her crowd who would be jumping and flailing their arms one minute, and swaying listlessly the next.
What SOPHIE serves up is real art in artificiality, braving forward into truly avant-garde territory and flouting the very bones of electro music, going right to its furthest reaches. It momentarily planted its feet back in conventional pop, before scuttling away once more into ambiguity. These hyperkinetic rhythms and tactile sounds in her delicate hands produce something of sophistication. All of a sudden, her pearls and Chanel-esque suit didn’t seem so quite out of place.
