In Conversation with Ben Long, Brother to SOPHIE

"The new album and the remix album are great examples of how beautifully SOPHIE created cohesion while constantly surprising...It's a combination of clarity, fluidity, and uncompromising dedication, an approach we continue to be guided by."

Interview by Georgia Mulraine

Amidst a generation of music makers inspired by experimentalism and testing boundaries, SOPHIE’s hyperreal world of sounds still feels somewhat unsurpassable. Beyond the innovation which SOPHIE imparted on electronic dance music and pop, she manipulated sound in a way that explored identity – significant to her story as the first openly transgender woman to be nominated for a Grammy with her debut studio album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides (2018).

SOPHIE only released Oil, a compilation album, a remix album and a slew of singles during her lifetime - a career tragically cut short by her unexpected death. Believing in the potentiality of software to generate any sound or texture in electronic music, SOPHIE’s singular productions are remarkable for her commitment to synthesising all sounds, building soundscapes of brutal avant-garde noise, sugary pop vocals and manipulated pitch. The scope which SOPHIE saw to keep pushing these soundscapes to new territories, in ways that connected with people, as dancers and as humans, did not stop with Oil. However short SOPHIE's career may have been, her influence has massively impacted the face of modern pop, and will so for generations to come.

Today, we are lucky enough that SOPHIE's unwavering vision continues to be nurtured by her friends and close collaborators, culminating in the release of SOPHIE, a self-titled posthumous album in September 2024. 

Crowning SOPHIE as our Album of the Year in 2024 epitomises the celebration of an artist who succeeded in creating a body of work so visionary that her fans and our shared music-loving community will forever admire her touch in a very tangible way. To see more music materialise from a career so groundbreaking, but so prematurely concluded, is really a gift to commemorate.

In order to further explore the story of this final work, we chat with SOPHIE's brother; songwriter and record producer Ben Long, who finalised the production of the artist's unpublished works to become SOPHIE.

Hey Ben,

We are really pleased to celebrate SOPHIE as our Album of the Year 2024, a masterful statement offering fans a further and much sought-after experience of her visionary sound world.

As SOPHIE’s brother, longtime collaborator and studio engineer, we largely have you to thank for helping this project come to fruition, alongside an inspiring community of collaborators who also assisted in bringing this posthumous album together. In what way did collaboration really shape the album’s direction? Did this influence a change in the creative process in comparison to the creation of her debut album Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides?

This album was always very collaborative in its essence. It’s a collection of songs that were created over several years by SOPHIE along with some of her closest friends and regular collaborators. So in that sense, it was very collaborative at the stage of creating/writing these songs. SOPHIE wanted a lot of different voices on this album, unlike Oil which was pretty much all SOPHIE and Cecile. 

 When it came to putting the album together, the production and finishing processes were similar to Oil. SOPHIE and I did a lot of that work together, but also separately. So it wasn’t 100% collaborative at every stage, but a lot of the spirit of the record is. It feels to me like a natural progression from Oil, to the remix album to this album, with more and more collaborations every time. 

"Sometimes the styles may appear to come from very different places but the essence of SOPHIE's aesthetic and what mattered to her in sound and in feeling I think comes across throughout the discography."

Can you tell us a bit about your own collaboration with SOPHIE and how you first came to join forces on a creative level?

For almost as long as I can remember we did bits of music together growing up... but working together seriously didn’t start until 2015. As SOPHIE's profile grew I worked with her more and more. Initially as a tour manager and technician, then in a studio manager role, as I got to know her set-up and way of working more, engineering in the studio and on tours, and eventually producing music together.

Across the album’s 16 tracks, we experience SOPHIE’s textured approach to genre, melding ambient music, hip-hop, pop and techno into complete tracks featuring exhilarating and addictive tempo shifts (tracks like Elegance or Do You Wanna Be Alive?) These shifts feel reminiscent of older gems such as Faceshopping or Whole New World/Pretend World from Oil. Did the album share significant references with Sophie’s previous work in creating these real breakthrough dancefloor moments?

I think it definitely shares similarities with Oil. And Product, and all of SOPHIE productions really. The textures and the details in the sound design and the bright, shiny, exciting feel to the music particularly spring to mind.

Sometimes the styles may appear to come from very different places but the essence of SOPHIE's aesthetic and what mattered to her in sound and in feeling I think comes across throughout the discography.

The album is largely characterised by its structure of separate sections, moving from a dark and atmospheric opening, to dance-pop bangers, enveloping big-room techno and eventually concluding with more emotionally driven pop songs, ethereal and melodic. The vinyl release splits the album over 4 sides on 2LPs. Was there an intention here to help define these sections or a vision of the music being received in different settings?

SOPHIE always referred to the different ‘sections’ of this album. The ‘techno section’, the ‘joy section’, ‘pop section’ etc. And while the make-up of each section evolved over the years in terms of the tracks, versions and order, the spirit of each section remains as SOPHIE envisioned from the outset. We definitely wanted the album to play non-stop when streaming or listening on CD. We felt that was the most effective way of doing it, and didn’t feel the need to explicitly define the 4 sections. But when discussing the vinyl release, of course, it made perfect sense for each side to hold one section. 

You reached out to multidisciplinary artist Renata Raksha with the task of creating the visualiser for the album. Does the 67-minute video mirror the album’s arrangement and the emotions the music might make the listener feel?

Renata and SOPHIE had worked together several times through the years. And in 2018 and 2019 the three of us discussed how we saw the look and feel of this album. So we were really happy for Renata to develop those initial ideas when it came to putting together the artwork and visuals. We also wanted those people who had worked on the visual side of Sophie’s earlier work, such as Product, to share and contribute, especially Calum Morton of Numbers. The idea was to incorporate elements spanning the whole of SOPHIE career, both visually and musically.

SOPHIE’s undisputed legacy can not only be felt through the pioneering releases in her own name but also her production work for the likes of Madonna, Charli XCX, Vince Staples, Arca, Shygirl, Gaika, B.C. Kingdom or fellow Transgressive label signees Let’s Eat Grandma. What would you describe as the takeaway qualities of SOPHIE’s sound to anyone listening to her production for the first time today?,

I don’t think SOPHIE would want me to contextualise too much, or to give any kind of preconceptions of what to expect or look for in her music. I’m sure it will speak to different people in different ways. Hopefully, it will make people dance as I think that was always an intention, to make dance music, but beyond that, I wouldn’t want to theorise or analyse the music myself. 

As part of our Album of the Year celebrations, we are very excited to present an exclusive release of the Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides Non-Stop Remix album (2019), on vinyl for the first time after its initial release as a 3CD clutch bag. This release saw SOPHIE experiment with her debut statement in new ways, evidencing the fluid nature of her music and how it could lend itself to being revisited alongside trusted collaborators - alike to the completion of SOPHIE in 2024. How do you envision SOPHIE’s music and legacy best being preserved and celebrated from this point?

There are many different things to consider. And so many aspects to SOPHIE's legacy that we want to respect in their unique ways. I don’t think there will be any kind of blanket approach to any of this. The new album and the remix album are great examples of how beautifully SOPHIE created cohesion while constantly surprising, both within each standalone project and also when hearing her discography as a whole. It's a combination of clarity, fluidity, and uncompromising dedication, an approach we continue to be guided by.

Rough Trade Album of the Year 2024

SOPHIE - SOPHIE

Rough Trade Exclusive silver vinyl + Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides Non-Stop Remix Album on Rough Trade Exclusive red vinyl.