Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The album that electronic producer Sophie Xeon was working on as a follow-up to her acclaimed debut will never be heard, at least not in the state intended by its maker. The UK musician, who recorded as SOPHIE, died in 2021 aged 34 after falling accidentally from an Athens building. The album now appearing as Sophie is a posthumous assembly of tracks from the unfinished work in progress.In certain respects, its timing is opportune. Hailed as a visionary while alive, the producer’s repute has grown since her death. Sophie was associated with hyperpop, the sub-genre spearheaded by London record label PC Music more than a decade ago. This archly affectionate, highly conceptualised, extremely online take on chart pop and dance music has filtered into the mainstream. Charli XCX, she of the “brat summer”, is the most prominent example. “You had a power like a lightning strike,” she sings in Sophie’s memory on this year’s breakthrough Brat album.The producer was a mysterious figure at the start of her career, little more than a name, or even a rumour. She became more visible on her debut studio album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, released in 2018 after her announcement that she was transgender. Her electronically processed voice had a starring role in its songs, which were composed from a startling collision of abrasiveness, experimentalism, kitsch and catchiness. Themes of artificiality and realness, technology and feeling, gave the music a posthuman character. (Sophie’s desire to move into a new form of being apparently extended to rejecting all third-person pronouns, gendered or otherwise.)The album Sophie tries to give posthumous life to her posthuman soundworld. Its tracks have been completed by her studio-manager brother Benny Long, her closest collaborator. Lasting over an hour and featuring many guest vocalists, it comes across as a labour of love. But the results are patchy.With her voice absent from the songs, the figure of Sophie retreats back into the shadows. DJ Nina Kraviz drones about “unpredictable reality” over clichéd cosmic swooshes in “The Dome’s Protection”. Multidisciplinary artist Juliana Huxtable repeats “Plunging Asymptote”’s esoteric title over stop-start electronic outbursts as though stuck on autorepeat. Matters pick up with a move into club music with “Do You Wanna Be Alive” and “Elegance”, which have sharp beat switch-ups and sound design. But the album lacks the coherence and purposefulness of Sophie’s previous work. It pays tribute to a sadly extinguished talent.★★☆☆☆‘Sophie’ is released by Transgressive/Future Classic
