Back in 2015, a new song produced by SOPHIE and performed by Liz made its debut in, of all places, an advert for the Samsung Galaxy S6. It wasn’t a totally surprising direction for the producer – her debut compilation from the same year was named Product, after all, and the extended universe of hyperpop and PC Music was synonymous with glossy product launches. In any case, it clearly worked. “I got the phone,” admits Skip, the co-founder and programmer behind the fan-led preservation project WHOLENEW.WORLD, whose first memorable encounter with SOPHIE came via the commercial. “In a way, I’m kind of pissed off I didn’t discover [her] properly,” he adds, but it feels kind of apt.

SOPHIE, who passed away aged 34 in 2021, only released one official studio album in her lifetime, but there’s a whole treasure trove of unreleased projects, live sets, leaks, and deep lore. meg, Skip’s partner and co-founder of WHOLENEW.WORLD, cumulatively spent “at least four full days” trawling through old Instagram tags, Discord channels, Facebook comments, forum posts, and DMing SOPHIE fans to assemble an exhaustive archive of material, often unearthed after years in someone’s camera roll. More fans have since reached out, following shoutouts from other fan accounts.

Currently, the site hosts live sets and setlists dating back to a 2010 show at London’s XOYO (other highlights, which meg reels off like a SOPHIE encyclopedia, include her 2014 Just Jam livestream, her live debut at Teragram Ballroom in 2017, and her 2019 Unsound set). Other sections will host songs, photoshoots, and interviews in the near future. Leaked music won’t be featured on site, but will be documented in an attempt to “quell the rampant misinformation” that surrounds much of SOPHIE’s back-catalogue. 

Both in their early twenties and based on the west coast of the US, meg and Skip balance working on the site with full-time jobs, noting that the line between fan and archivist is “blurry” when it comes to artists like SOPHIE. “When you’re a fan of her work, considering so much is unreleased or confined to live sets, you’re either going to listen to leaks or live sets,” says meg. “I do both. I’m no saint!” The preservation project was born out of a specific frustration, though. “I was tired of stuff disappearing,” he adds. “It’s a lot less prevalent now, but her label would constantly copystrike stuff off the internet. Unless someone had a backup, it was just gone.” Other material was lost on hard drives that fans could no longer access, or old phones that weren’t backed up to the cloud. “It sucks that there’s so much that she played once, and it’s just gone now.”

The design of WHOLENEW.WORLD aims to stick close to SOPHIE’s own visual language and ideas. Inspired by a poster that came with Oil of Every Pearl, visitors are met with stretched, blown-up text that directs them to each part of the archive. “We wanted it to feel like SOPHIE, but at the same time we didn’t want to be SOPHIE,” Skip explains. “We wanted to be really clear that this is a fan-led thing, out of respect.”

“We’re preserving someone’s memories. It’s really special that they are willing to share that with us”

There were some challenges when it came to establishing the project, which went beyond the “crappy” search functions on Instagram and X (SOPHIE’s mononym doesn’t exactly help in this department). One of the main issues was the changing nature of the internet. “I sent probably 200 messages to people, if not more, and I got maybe 20 back,” says meg. “It’s kind of hard to reach out to people in a way that feels authentic, and not like you’re a bot trying to phish them. You can’t really assume people are being nice these days, on the internet.” Of the responses he did receive, he adds, some people never followed up with actual footage, or had lost all of their personal archive due to broken phones or dead laptops. This shows the importance of fan preservation projects like WHOLENEW.WORLD, meg adds, but also the importance of archiving your own life. “We’re preserving someone’s memories as well, and I think it’s really special that they are willing to share that with us.”

The question of who gets to pen SOPHIE's history and shape her legacy is also a loaded subject, with posthumous releases and collaborations sometimes sparking controversy among fans. “We were definitely really sensitive to her legacy,” Skip adds. “From the beginning, it was more about democratising access.” After all, not everyone has the time or resources to go on a treasure hunt for lost SOPHIE tracks. “I really want her legacy to live on, as opposed to us adding anything onto it,” meg agrees. “I just want people to know what was already there, and what happened. I want to be able to show people: this is the artist I love. This is someone who was so important to so many people.”

Below, the creators of WHOLENEW.WORLD share some of the favourite deep cuts they’ve discovered over the course of project.

CHOP SUEY SET, SEATTLE, 2014

“It’s nothing crazy. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill SOPHIE set, honestly, but there’s this one song there. The fan name is “Coral Reef”, which I love. Its actual name is ‘DIDDDDZZ Computer’... like, what is this, girl? But that’s in there, a recording of a song that people always [thought] she only played once, in this very specific set.’”

SWG3 SET, GLASGOW, 2016

“Once we launched the site, someone reached out with this recording. It was really cool hearing something that nobody else has ever heard; someone’s precious memory that they’ve been holding onto for so long. [There are] these moments where someone reaches out to you, and trusts you with something that is so special to them.”

AI SET, WASHINGTON DC, 2016

“I was convinced I was not going to find anything on this at all, because if you look it up, there’s a Setlist.fm page, but besides that there are no videos of it online. By chance, I messaged someone in a PC Music Discord who had sent an AI Washington clip that looked cool. To my amazement, they had so many videos. I’ve actually got a few comments where people were like, ‘Thank you for bringing this back because I’ve never been able to find anything on it.’”

1015 FOLSOM SET, SAN FRANCISCO, 2015

“This was in October of 2015. She played a set at 105 Folsom. I’m jealous I didn’t see her there in SF. And there were these pictures I found on Facebook, where they took a photo of her DJ deck. I feel bad snooping, but there’s a file name where we could see what it says. We could barely make it out because it’s really compressed and pixelated, but I could make out the words. I was like, ‘What track is this?’ Then, lo and behold, someone else had a video of the photo being taken. So now we finally know this one song, or transitional piece, that she’s played a bunch, and I could finally give it a proper name in the set list. [“The Sound.”] That was a really cool little moment, connecting the dots.”

CLUB 2 CLUB AFTERPARTY, 2019

“I didn’t even know this existed, until I started working on [WHOLENEW.WORLD]. There’s this one song called “Structure”, and people were like, ‘She only played this song once,’ and I was like, ‘Wait, she played it here, too.’ I literally feel like that stupid ‘WeLL aCtuAlLy’ meme. But then that led to me discovering this amazing photo set that a photographer took at that party, and she looks amazing. She just looks insane in these photos, and I’m glad that more people are able to see them now, because they were just kind of dumped onto Facebook.”

If you’re interested in contributing to the fan-led project, you can reach out via archive@wholenew.world.