Bleep

It is no overstatement to say that SOPHIE changed the landscape of electronic, dance, and pop music with PRODUCT. Even as a collection of singles preceding her debut album proper OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES, they form a foundational, sucrose sweet compilation which firmly placed her on the map. A necessary introduction to the pioneering sonic worlds she created (and visuals ones, having iconicised colourful 3D slides and Karl Nawrot and Radim Peško’s Lÿno typeface in the process), PRODUCT found SOPHIE going where few producers dared; ten years later, it goes further still, and this anniversary reissue is here to remind us of her undeniable legacy.

‘BIPP’ was the first taste of what we now understand to be a pinnacle in dancepop: indescribable and uncategorisable when it first dropped, it eluded genre classification with whirring, bubbling sounds as it created infectious movement with almost no percussion at all. It speaks to her talent for creating new sounds and wittingly representing concepts through synthesis, like with the tongue in cheek ‘LEMONADE’ ingeniously fusing fizzy, carbonated, and whistling sonics, or the rubbery liquid and whipping beats of ‘HARD’, where tungsten tough clangs and slams break for divine glittery electropop catharsis. Fan favourite ‘OOH’ glosses that creativity in bonafide invigorating heartbreak synthpop, as expressive percussion snaps like telephone wires.

SOPHIE also flexes her sometimes glossed over penchant for grime on PRODUCT, with the high pitched melodies and splashes of ‘ELLE’, the pulsating, fragmented ‘MSMSMSM’ splintering ping-ponging chiptune into eerie hairraising drones like horror movie strings or a swarm of locusts, and the helium powered ‘GET HIGHER’ with glitchy pinpricks and squeaky candy carnage. Whether dark and drilling or cheery and irreverent, the ultra sharp and clean digital software sounds of these tracks have been detonating dancefloors ever since they dropped in a riot of neon-coloured bursts, glistening textures, ultra-poptimistic vocals, and rude bass science.