I don't mean to reproach you by saying this

I don't mean to reproach you by saying this

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youtube.com/watch?v=V8fwWZD159k
youtube.com/watch?v=WyX-PRqzV78
youtube.com/watch?v=LdLvp630plc
youtube.com/watch?v=6Z3N79ktprw
youtube.com/watch?v=qfAqtFuGjWM
youtube.com/watch?v=7hPMmzKs62w
youtube.com/watch?v=N2haRSNr08M
youtube.com/watch?v=m_S0qCeA-pc
soundcloud.com/tankyu_alt/sophie-kitty-kat-live-echoplex
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

BUT I THINK YOUR INSIDE IS YOUR BEST SIDE

can someone give me a quick rundown?

That's SOPHIE. S/he was a producer that first got known for making really interesting, intentionally over-produced hyper pop tracks with rubbery, textured sounds.
Witness:
youtube.com/watch?v=V8fwWZD159k
youtube.com/watch?v=WyX-PRqzV78
youtube.com/watch?v=LdLvp630plc
youtube.com/watch?v=6Z3N79ktprw
and s/he even worked with a few pop stars like Charli XCX and Madonna, which lead to really interesting results.
youtube.com/watch?v=qfAqtFuGjWM
youtube.com/watch?v=7hPMmzKs62w
youtube.com/watch?v=N2haRSNr08M

Anyway, s/he was known for using a lot of strange textures and interesting dynamics to make neat caricaturist pop tunes. Fun fact: s/he doesn't use samples. S/he makes every sound from building waveforms from scratch. This is what makes him/her amazing.
Also, she remained semi-anonymous for a very long while. We knew his/her birth name (Samuel Long) but s/he would often hire drag queens to mime playing live while s/he (the real SOPHIE) stood still in a corner somewhere, in a suit, looking mysterious.
Anyway, s/he released a new song (the one OP posted) and it's...terrible. It's really bad. S/he also got some new plastic surgery that's also...pretty bad. S/he used to be a looker.
I keep using both pronouns because I'm not sure if SOPHIE is a character or if s/he's really trans. It's very unclear because s/he's buried real deep under layers and layers of mystery and irony. I'm honestly not even sure if that's really SOPHIE. So I'm not sure what gender s/he identifies as...I just don't know.
SOPHIE was working with Rihanna at some point but nothing seems to have come of it.

Anyway, now you're caught up.

OH, another fun fact: SOPHIE's debut album PRODUCT came with a 'silicone product' that very closely resembled a sex toy.

Oh, I forgot to post the new song.
It's called It's Okay to Cry

youtube.com/watch?v=m_S0qCeA-pc

sophie's music is made by an AMAB person named samuel long

sam presented as a male and used male pronouns until very recently. the vocalists on his tracks and models in his album art were AFAB women who he did not credit or acknowledge. he received criticism for this, from writers who accused him of creating a female persona for his project as a marketing hook to differentiate him from other producers.

around this time, sophie's career started to suffer. QT, a project conceived as a collaboration between sam, AG cook, and sam's girlfriend at the time, was supposed to be the breakthrough moment that took him from "buzz artist" to real mainstream force. it flopped horribly. interest in sophie's upcoming singles comp "product" also withered away in the wake of QT's failure, and subsequent attempts to get the buzz going again like a poor-selling, critically-loathed collaborative EP with charli xcx failed as well.

sophie's new single appears to address the criticisms of "feminine appropriation". sophie broke up with the model who portrayed QT some time ago, and since then began dating a trans woman and came out to her friends as trans.

while many of sophie's remaining fans have been very supportive of her transition, the music has not been well-received. the song has an extremely low number of plays on youtube and soundcloud, and even fans who support sophie's trans identity have expressed disappointment with the actual music.

tragically, the problematic previous version of sophie which used uncredited labor from female singers and models to portray sophie's femininity was more palatable to a mainstream audience because it better conformed to existing societal norms of what comes across as "female"

by queering the presentation of the project and courageously centering her own body, she has probably destroyed her own wider commercial prospects

before, samuel long could write and produce for other artists or make business deals without having to worry about sexism or transphobia alienating audiences or potentially collaborators and benefactors. now, she will face the full penalty of sexism and transphobia in every aspect of her life. she will struggle like she has never struggled before, and nothing in her future will ever be as easy as things were early on, when most people who encountered her just thought she was a handsome young white man from the UK.

a modern tragedy

Producer here.
His sound design is top tier interesting and despite the fact that I hate his musc, I still enjoy listening to it for the noises.
But I wouldn't really call it overproduced. It was quite simple actually. It just had cool noises.

Btw. Did anyone reveal how those sounds were made?
On Vyzee it almost sounds like a heavily manipulated brass sample, so maybe hat could be a good lead.

The only other song I know that has similar sounds is called Rubber by Swick & Lucid.

This is a sad story.

I know he uses an Elektron Monomachine but I don't know what software he uses

I like to think of Sophie as Death Grips' little sister

Neat, thank you.

I dont necessarily like SOPHIE, but I would be lying if I said I didn't respect what s/he is doing.

sophie can still come back. she has has been playing some amazing unreleased songs in dj sets for the past 5 years. I can think of enough unreleased sophie songs to fill an entire double album,

sophie has the files, literally just fucking upload them anywhere please

soundcloud.com/tankyu_alt/sophie-kitty-kat-live-echoplex

sophie hasnt been the same since taking the bogpill :(

while "bipp" was an underground hit that generated a lot of excitement, it was not a mainstream smash. the follow-up singles and eventual singles comp did not make anywhere near the same amount of impact, and the cycle was tainted by controversy such as the "feminine appropriation" article and the use of "lemonade" in a mcdonald's commercial, which struck a lot of fans used to death grips and academic criticism of late capitalism as a bridge too far.

sophie was already fighting an uphill battle when it came to overcoming the cynicism these events triggered even before this new single arrived. it doesn't seem like she has any intention of trying to create a worthy follow-up to bipp/elle, it seems more like she just wants a fresh start.

she'll get it and she deserves it, but me, well. i didn't like this when it was called how to dress well, and at least that dude can sort of sing a little bit.

This is bait, right? Becoming trans was the smartest and most lucrative/strategic thing Sophie could have possibly done. Do you realize how many woke points that gets you?

woke points only matter in journalism, and even then, most of the writers who got hired to fill diversity quotas have been laid off this year after failing to generate sufficient traffic from the demographics that advertisers prefer.

in music, being trans means that managers and label a&rs and fellow producers who used to treat her with respect will now either find her uncomfortable to be around or start seeing her as a target for sexual advances.

very few women survive in this environment, trans or otherwise.

you're so dumb lol just look up statistics or w/e, being trans isn't good for earning money or gaining public favor. sure every once in a while a talentless trans person gets plucked out and raised up to be an icon when the analytics show people want to feel less bigoted, but by and large being a trans person fcuks your life up
and get off of Sup Forums occasionally, you'll feel better

is there anywhere that shows you how s/he produces? or what it takes to make music like him/her?

>you're so dumb lol just look up statistics or w/e
>and get off of Sup Forums occasionally, you'll feel better
Like pottery

uh no

>S/he

shit song and baiting just for the transgender points

Sweetie, I'm not even 100% sure of his/her real name.

No. One of the unspoken rules of thumb with electronic music is that you don't try to imitate others. You don't ask the artists for samples or stems unless you're doing a remix of one of their songs, and you don't ask how they work their magic.
It's like asking a chef for his secret recipe. It's kind of the thing that made him famous for the first place, you don't just ask him for it.

This makes Arca look heterosexual by comparison.

Buy a monomachine

...

Was famous before identifying as a woman so the vast majority of media available about Sophie identifies her as a man up until very recently. It'll probably lead to confusion for the rest of her career

just reading this post is a rollercoaster ride, it's not a good career move to confuse your audience and nobody's going to know what she's about unless her new work vastly eclipses her old work

This is why shrouding yourself in mystery is a bad idea. When you finally say something sincere, no one knows if you're joking or mocking something.

idpol was a mistake

One bad song doesn't mean you've fell off forever. Sophie was just experimenting, it doesn't mean it's musical talent has evaporated.

monomachine for samples, ableton for composition

holy shit i don't know if this is cynical genius for idpol signaling or whether this goose is cooked

I loved early QT and this is on another level of sweet, it's like erasure on nangs

The single "came out" bad imo

But his target audience loves this sort of thing.
Yes, he lost points among the general population, but he gained more among the LGBT community, and he can be hugely successful by just getting big in that niche.
Yes, becoming trans eliminated his chances at mainstream success, but let's not lie to ourselves here. He wouldn't have reached that anyway.
This abandons the sinking ship that was his attempt at mainstream success, to jump on the much healthier boat of niche success.

That doesn't prevent people from reverse engineering your sound design and making tutorials and presets bout it.
Is it shitty? Ask Getter.
Does it happen? Definitely.

Unless you're Sophie yourself or someone close to him, I don't see why you'd care so much about being fair to him about something that noody cares about being fair at (no producer would ever say no to learning new tehniques, just because they're someone's secret sound).

>Fun fact: s/he doesn't use samples. S/he makes every sound from building waveforms from scratch
Doesn't seem to stop him from copying other people though, like the whistle from Rebel without a pause (or JB's The grunt) he used in Lemonade.

Do we know who made the sound at 3:31 in Bitch I'm Madonna?
Was it Diplo or Sophie?

the song is bad and sophie should feel bad

product was great though

/thread

>but he gained more among the LGBT community, and he can be hugely successful by just getting big in that niche.
the lgbt isn't big dummy.
sophie is still second tier to fucking arca and flume.

>BBC, I ball so hard

>the lgbt isn't big dummy.
Big enough to make you a millionaire or celebrity, considering it's not just LGBT people listening to it.
You just have to be a prominent figure in that niche, which Sophie was already on the right track to become.

>sophie is still second tier to fucking arca and flume.
He's also not nearly as good as them, from any standpoint, and he'd definitely not be as popular as them even as a straight CIS male making non-gay music.
Just because he's not as big as the top names it doesn't ean that he can't become successful, and by pandering to the LGBT audience he can get more popular than by pandering to the mainstream one.

>Big enough to make you a millionaire or celebrity, considering it's not just LGBT people listening to it.
possibly but sophie is still making less than 70grand a year. not even close as you think. the vince and charli collabs have not been profitable as you think.

> and by pandering to the LGBT audience he can get more popular than by pandering to the mainstream one.
i agree but unless she starts tweeting and doing tons of interviews explaining her situation. she's not going to win them over.

t.queer person

no idea why you guys think the scene is that easy to exploit

this is pretty sad
"changing" your gender is basically a step away from suicide anyway

i am a fan of SOPHIE but this song didn't do anything for me. is the main appeal of it just that the video is some sort of way to come out?

also don't think of me as a sophie hater i love her work. but right now shes going for a desperate play and im afraid unless this next album is a literal bop. at best she'll get a BNM from p4k. shes waited too talented to end up just being like elysia crampton or dj sprinkles.

>possibly but sophie is still making less than 70grand a year.
how do u know this

>possibly but sophie is still making less than 70grand a year. not even close as you think. the vince and charli collabs have not been profitable as you think.
I'm not saying he's already popular or rich.
Just that with that level of popularity and with that unique sound he's got the right cards to become popular and rich.
Before this new song he had all the requirements for success, and only needed to grind a little more and release one popular song, and he'd become a big name in the electronic music scene.
By going full LGBT he's gone into a specific niche, which, depending on his next moves could either make it very difficult or very easy to increase his popularity, but he has to focus on the LGBT audience and make it big there before trying to gain mainstream audience (which he can only hope to get if he doesn't go too extreme on the gay shit while pandering to the LGBTs).

>i agree but unless she starts tweeting and doing tons of interviews explaining her situation. she's not going to win them over.
I agree.
He can either keep up with the mysterious persona, and ruin everything, or get out there and become public (in a sort of rebranding way).

>no idea why you guys think the scene is that easy to exploit
I don't. I'm just looking at it as someone who knows a bit about marketing and is into multiple types of electronic music.
You have to consider how big a niche is, and how easy it is to branch out into mainstream from it.
The LGBT niche is big enough to make you a millionaire in a few years if you're moderately successful in it (as opposed to some genres where you can barely make a grand a year, where it's completely impossible to become successful).
And as with every field, it's MUCH easier to become successful in a niche than it is to become mainstream. this is always true whether it is music, clothes, food, cars, etc.
And it's also MUCH easier to become mainstream successful if you start from a position of niche success.

>also don't think of me as a sophie hater
I didn't.
Actually was thinking that you might actually be a shill or Sophie himself.

You didn't say anything negative about him. Just that he's in a bad spot right now.
This doesn't make you a hater.
Especially with all the (explicit or implicit) praise you gave him.

i agree with everything you said. hope it works out for her honestly. she better release all those other tracks tho.

Indeed my friend.

Goddamn use They instead of he/she. It saves time, space, and serves the same effect

His cheek bones freak me out

I love the new single, it's a grower, the sound design is 10/10
I'm opposing PCness, but people saying this trans thing is just a way to make cash,.. on one hand you Never know with PC music, on the other hand, if s/he really made that change, I totally support it

it is also,you know,not rude as shit,not that it matters i guess

They is a completely neutral thing to call someone that you don't know the gender of. If I said an intergender name of someone, let's say Cody, it would be completely acceptable to refer to them as they if you don't know what their gender is.

Product flopped because we had already heard over half the songs and the new shit was just bad.

...

its PVC

What if you do know their gender?

If I see omeone who I think is biologically male, I'm gonna call him with a male pronoun because that's what he is. A male.
I'm not going to live my life assuming everyone may or may not be a transgender, because it would be ridiculous since they're such a small percentage of the population.
There are almost two times more schizophrenic people in the US than there are with gender disphoria. Does that mean if I meet someone I'm going to assume that they may or may not have schizophfrenia?
Obviously not, because it would be stupid and everyone just assumes that they're with the majority until proven otherwise.

Only after it's been established that this person has gender disphoria (either because they tell you or it's immediately apparent, like in OP's picture), then you can entertain the idea that they might want to be called with pronouns different than their biological ones.

Non-cis people who expect everyone to not assume their gender are retards who should accept that they're such a statistically insignificant number that it just doesn't make sense to assume that someone isn't cis without a specific reason to.

Bump

s/he is not artistically literate enough for me

Holy fuck they release one promo track that's clearly an ALBUM INTRO and you mongoloids immediately pan the whole project

Just give it some time, there's hella unreleased SOPHIE material that's gonna get out there soon

Bretty sure it's just prosthetics and he didn't actually get plastic surgery

Could be, but those tits certainly look like HRT tits.

>sophie is still second tier to fucking arca and flume.
Flume is gay?

It doesn't make his face look feminine in the slightest if that's what he intended.

If you know their gender then you use the correct pronoun. It's so incredibly simple. It's not even a matter of gender the guy was using s/he because they didn't know the gender.

i luv sophie and the camera shyness made me think it was just an ag cook project for a while, sophie is still a fairly popular underground artist with good connections, playing shows with flume soon too i believe
the new song is weird though, doesnt feel like it has much potential as a single

PASORI: Is your plan to bridge your previous music with new music in the live show?

SOPHIE: No, it’s all new music. Some people may recognize a few sounds, but this is an entirely new show with new music. I wanted it to have that feeling of being in the moment more than listening for music you might recognize or have an existing relationship with. It’s been exciting to do it in this way — performing something entirely new.

this post is so weird, why are you acting like her career is over just because she didnt do anything for a few years... I really don't think QT was intended to be more than a one off project, unless you know something I don't.

That said if anything killed her career it was moving to America. she (or back then, he) could have been a gay version of late 90s aphex twin in london but chose to move to LA and focus on touring and trying to break through in pop production.

There's still plenty of time for it to pay off but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer gay Aphex Twin

guess what, snowflake? careers are about more than just whether or not you like the music. careers require the passionate, positive engagement of a lot of people. sophie's musical projects have inspired little but ambivalence and dislike for literally years now.

she's in trouble, she's been in trouble, this gambit was one of the last plays she had left to make and it's crashing and burning.

and yes, anons, i *do* know something you don't, so sit down, shut up, and stop deluding yourselves into thinking your opinions count for anything unless you're actually part of this industry.

lmao how exactly do you "know something we don't". you sound like a second grader saying their uncle works at xbox

the people i went to second grade with probably did have parents who were on the board at microsoft. your metaphor is completely nonsensical to me.

unless I see real picture of her, I still think her enhanced cheekbones in this video are not surgery but actual makeup: she has always added uncanny valley & ironic fake-ness bits in her visuals & music

I just really want SOPHIE and Miccachu to collab sometime.

tldr. authenticity is not a valuable mainstream product in the late 2010's

Nigga looks like the lost Bogdanoff brother

gay