Strange business, posthumous records. Placed on the thin ridge that separates tribute from exploitation, it is more likely that they focus on the latter, that they are a quick and sloppy money-squeezing operation, rather than a sincere tribute to the legacy and work of the artist taken into consideration. Of course, there is no shortage of exceptions to the rule (every reference to “Calling Out Of Context” is fully justified), but those remain, exceptions that can do little against a mass of publications of little artistic value. In short, at the announcement of the upcoming release of “SOPHIE” last June, there was great fear that it would be a void cash-grab and little more. More details then emerged, the involvement of his brother Benny Long as curator and producer of pieces already on their way to the finishing touches, and the publication takes on a much more justified perspective.
What was intended to be the third album of the producer who tragically passed away three and a half years ago, now presents itself as a testament, a long fraternal dedication to an artist cut short at the height of her creativity, an electronic poet whose intuitions for the future reach but muffled, deprived of the definitive plan with which he would share them with his public. Even so, the signs of the creativity of one of the greatest visionaries of the last twenty years remain evident.
It is worth reading the interview that Benny Long gave to Paper, it reveals many interesting aspects to better understand the development and production process of “SOPHIE”. It better clarifies the sister's workaholicism, the incessant work of manipulation and editing of the pieces, the constant change in the album's set list, to the point that the version now proposed could perhaps have undergone further variations in the future. The conversation reveals above all the pain and love that the brother, a close collaborator of Xeon since his beginnings, felt for producerthe maturation that he himself underwent in working on his sister's projects, the first who would have liked all this effort not to remain locked in the archives.
We are therefore only now able to have the album in our hands, structured as it is complex electro-opera in four acts, a party alien capable of moving between the earthly and the metaphysical, euphoria and despondency, a new transhumanist compendium in which SOPHIE allows herself to be surrounded by collaborators, friends and partners who have accompanied her throughout her creative journey. The genius that animated the previous tests, however, remains only in watermark.
Many are already writing it, here too we agree that the entire album, for being the sequel to one of the definitive works of the 1910s, is surprising in not being surprising at all. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it helps little in supporting a compositional scaffolding that flows into a sort of bittersweet homage to SOPHIE's career and forty years of club-culturealthough always treated with that touch of “harsh rubberiness” that since “Product” enjoyed overturning every commonly accepted pop semantics.
Now that the entire system has made these intuitions its own, digesting them to the point of making them mainstreama record like this often travels on a safe used basis which flattens the results towards a safe yet disconcerting mediocrity. The second quartet is exemplary of this result. A sort of homage to his beloved trans community, with a sequencing that brings him closer to his famous ones dj sethowever, wriggles between tired pop ostinatos, dribbling on well-known latex surfaces (“Reason Why”, a trap rehash of the first aesthetic Pc-music), crystalline beat bubblegum (The dancefloor obsessive about “Live In My Truth”), repetitive frames hyper (“Why Lies” and its scattered references freestyle), before closing in a confusion spoken-word tech-house that almost seems like an out-of-time dramatization of “Lemonade” (“Do You Wanna Be Alive?”).
The other quartets are not too more convincing. The first plays on a polarization between glacial ambient explorations (the introduction, cavernous on the border with doom; “The Dome's Protection”, a long sidereal journey with Nina Kraviz in the role of impassive narrator sci-fi) and bizarre post-club diversions (“Rawwwwww”, all in all a limping version über-minimal of “Ponyboy”; the nervous rattles of “Plunging Asymptote”), essentially dividing perfectly in half that combination which had instead found full identity in the possible universes of “Whole New World/ Pretend World”.
In a similar way the third transports us to the teeming clubs of Berlin, but despite some good timbral intuitions (the counterpoint work in the second half of “Elegance”) the basic approach leads to an obsession technoid far too extremist, between pounding dark visions (“Berlin Nightmare”) and ringing electrical short circuits (“Gallop”). The last piece does better, a quadruple that already from the titles reveals a tangible underlying tenderness, linked to that exuberance of which Xeon has always been a great interpreter.
Songs with a compact pop construction indicate the clear impact of producer in contemporary languages, also and above all in favor of more linear melodic supports; synthetic candy like “Always And Forever” and patterns atmospheric (the disguised electro of “My Forever”) speak of a producer always at ease in leading her stylistic signature towards softer territories, still full of meaning.
It needs to be stated again, it's impossible to know how much of what you can hear on this album fully expresses SOPHIE's intent. Who knows if some of the songs would have seen the light or would have been replaced by new ones. Who knows if there would have been a final touch, a magic that would have changed the final result. Despite the emotion inherent in being able to listen to new material, the regret of not being able to have feedback from the person concerned remains strong. Unfortunately this is how it went, and there is no song or “unfinished” album that can call into question its legacy. Rest softly, poet!
09/30/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
