We don’t get to hear enough euphoric rave pop from London-based producer SOPHIE but it's long been a Dazed favourite and the new EP, Nothing More to Say, is worth the wait. SOPHIE's soundtracked many a feverish night out around London, but the 26-year-old has also played around Europe and North America, including with old friends Light Asylum, who SOPHIE remixed last year. Shannon Funchess has been a fan of their work since she sang with their old band in Berlin, “I really love the sound, SOPHIE possesses a talent and an ear for music beyond their race and years and is in touch soulfully with sound. Very rare."
Although SOPHIE has a love for clubs, both going out and Djing in them, their favourite place to hear new music is closer to home. “There’s a newsagents near where I live called Krystals, I can’t believe how much good music they play that I never heard before!” SOPHIE exclaims. “Pop music from like the 70s, 80s and 90s, and kind of fluro dance stuff as well. I like when music kind of falls into your path, rather than having to seek it out.”
SOPHIE's talent for spotting a hook goes back to an unusually early age. “I started making music on a computer when I was 11. Mostly it was really bizarre. In one, I slowed an organ sample down into a trip hop kind of beat; in another I sampled Placebo, which somehow went into ‘Born Slippy’; and this friend of my mum’s had a really shrill voice that I thought was hilarious, so mum called her up and I sampled the way she answered the phone.”
The kid's swimming pools and bouncy castles on SOPHIE's website are a heady match for the sound - “the grotty plastic colours are kind of how I’d imagine my music would look” - but despite some early web-era vibes and heavy hints of 90s garage, don’t even mention the word nostalgia. “People say my music is nostalgic but it’s not intentional, I’m not a nostalgic person at all!" SOPHIE insists. "I’m interested in what’s happening now, what I’m doing now. I’d like my music to be the antithesis of nostalgia – sensual, an assault on the senses. Nothing that reminds you of the past, just what you’re feeling right now.”
