SOPHIE's final album reviewed: 'a tender tribute'


SOPHIE: SOPHIE (Transgressive/Future Classic) ★★★
Katy Perry: 143 (Capitol) ★★
Alan Sparhawk: White Roses, My God (Sub Pop) ★★★
The Cathode Ray: Advance Retreat (Stereogram Recordings/Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★★
Those who knew her, and some who didn’t, proclaimed electronica musician SOPHIE to be a star. By 2021, it was official – the minor planet 1980 RE1 is now named Sophiexeon after the Grammy-nominated producer who has Scottish connections thanks to her rave-loving father and her early releases on Glasgow labels Huntley & Palmers and Numbers.
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Hide AdThis transgender artist was a prolific collaborator, working with the likes of Lady Gaga, Charli XCX and Kim Petras. She was acclaimed during her lifetime, but the cult has grown following her untimely death in 2021 after an accidental fall from a building in Athens, with Rihanna, Charli XCX and St Vincent all paying tribute with song and album dedications.
Her posthumously released final album has now been completed by her brother and studio manager Benny Long according to her projected plans and production style and opens with the deep drone surges of foreboding instrumental Intro (The Full Horror) before her vocal foils pitch in.
Old Town Road co-writer Jozzy semi-raps the bare hip-hop-inspired track Rawwwwww, New York artist Juliana Huxtable fronts the suitably angular Plunging Asymptote, named after a geometry term, while Russian singer/producer Nina Kraviz ponders algorithms on the woozy wash of sci-fi soundscape The Dome’s Protection.
Enticing instrumental Elegance dovetails into the playful, squelchy Berlin Nightmare featuring Sophie’s partner Evita Manji, while Live In My Truth and Reason Why, the latter featuring Kim Petras, are poppier affairs. The album draws to a close with a strong run of hooks including the hyperpop of Exhilarate, fragrant Always and Forever and soulful My Forever. SOPHIE is a tender tribute from those determined to safeguard her legacy.
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Katy Perry’s latest album is a more generic electro pop exercise with producer Max Martin also phoning it in. Kim Petras pops up again, featuring on the mechanically sexy Gorgeous. The more celebratory dance pop of Woman’s World is at least spiced with a flavour of Eighties exercise video soundtrack and I’m His, He’s Mine is elevated by a sample from Crystal Waters’ house classic Gypsy Woman. Perry is still la-da-deeing on the functional Crush and evoking Italian piano house on the intro to the infectious Lifetimes. At just over half an hour long, 143 doesn’t outstay its welcome but neither does it conjure any pop magic to match the best of Perry’s back catalogue.


The debut solo album by Low frontman Alan Sparhawk is an act of lo-fi electronic catharsis following the death of his wife and co-singer Mimi Parker. White Roses, My God was composed in secret, using his children’s drum machine and synthesizers. In his distress, Sparhawk has said he doesn’t want to hear his own voice so he has distorted it, and therefore much of the lyrical content, beyond recognition. Despite the distancing effect of his pitchshifted vocals, grief seeps through the cracks. The result is an entirely unconventional requiem.
Can U Hear is ominous with a hint of the devotional. I Made This Beat finds solace in repetition. Heaven features some more discernible lyrics (“it’s a lonely place if you’re alone”) but it’s gone in barely a minute. Somebody Else’s Room repurposes lyrics which could feature in a cheesy dance hit as a sorrowful meditation on disorientation, while there is no mistaking the cry “I wanna feel something” on the track of the same name.
Edinburgh’s The Cathode Ray formed back in 2006 with the intention of combining their love for the sounds of late Seventies New York and Manchester. Four albums down the line, founder member Paul Haig has long departed but frontman Jeremy Thoms channels Magazine-era Howard Devoto against an evocative backdrop of post-punk guitars, ranging from mellifluous elegance to gothic maelstrom.
CLASSICAL
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Hide AdBuilding Castles: Live Music Now Scotland celebrates 40 Years (Delphian) ★★★★
Live Music Now Scotland does important work, providing a platform for upcoming professionals to experience music-making in a variety of settings: among the elderly and those with special needs, and introducing children to a world of music they might never otherwise encounter. Ten years on from its 30th birthday tribute, Delphian continues its collaborative association with a 40th birthday release featuring music specially written for LMNS, delivered by associated performers. There’s an attractive mixture of styles, from the folkish charm of singer-songwriter Karine Polwart’s Keep Building Castles and Meet Me at Loganlea to the leisurely jazz leanings of Savourna Stevenson’s characterful Mill Memories, the impish quirkiness of Erin Thomson’s The Graceful Art of Walking on Stilts, the playful humour of Jennifer Martin’s Bi-Cycle and What’s for You…, and the bittersweet contrasts expressed in John McLeod’s reflections on the coal-mining industry, Songs from Above and Below. Ken Walton
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Anne Wood: When Mountains Meet (Own Label) ★★★★
This highly engaging album features music from violinist and composer Anne Wood’s autobiographical show about her Scots-Pakistani heritage, When Mountains Meet, hailed by the Scotsman as “magical … a ceilidh play for two cultures”. Wood, plays bowed sarangi as well as violin, and is joined by a richly cross-cultural ensemble including vocalist Niloo-Far Khan, Mary Macmaster on electroharp and Gaelic vocals, sitarist Rakae Jamil and Sodhi on tabla. Scots and south Asian music meets and melds in tracks such as Pibroch Alap, with its fiddle lament and sitar deliberations, reels dance over rattling tabla while in Eddrachillis Horo, staccato konnakol vocals chatter through Gaelic work song. The chant of Who Am I Here? echoes the confusion of culture clash, sitar casts a dreamy spell in Lucknow, while Macmaster’s O Mo Dhùthaich, sung over clarsach and sitar, sets the seal on this cultural melting pot. Jim Gilchrist
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