Rapid Fire Reviews: I Miss Sophie

Earlier this year we lost a remarkable, unparalleled talent in SOPHIE. There's nothing I can say that makes it any easier to swallow but I did want to take a moment to review some music she either directly contributed to or artists she worked with and clearly heavily influenced.

FUCK IT UP EP - Basside

Basside are a Miami duo that are fusing some rap and hip hop sound with club music. This is an EP I've heard a lot of people getting excited about and I first remember reading about the duo a few years ago now. This is definitely an interesting EP that is hard to pigeonhole genre wise, there are plenty of verses that are basically rapping but also songs with meditative repetitive club ready refrains. All the tracks are produced by SOPHIE herself and the instrumentals definitely shine throughout with her trademark edge showing up all over the clapping percussion and heavy bass all over the EP. The personality on display is sometimes cute and very sensual and sometimes a little obnoxious it really just depends on what the intention of the song seems to be as far as dancefloor vs. rap tunes. While some of these tracks can be annoying particularly the incessant and seemingly never ending SWIPE there is still a lot of great raunchy lyricism and fun instrumentals on this EP. 6/10

CHEETAH BEND - Jimmy Edgar

Jimmy Edgar is a Detroit electronic music producer who I've been aware of for quite a while now because of his collaborations with SOPHIE and work on Vince Staples' Big Fish Theory, but never really dove into the material he released under his own name. I was paying attention to the singles from this record and was impressed by the feature list but somehow it just slipped by me. Ultimately I'm really glad I got around to listening to it because this thing has a stacked feature list including not only SOPHIE but Danny Brown, Matt Ox, Hudson Mohawke, Milly Go Lightly and B La B, all of whom make great appearances. This is a versatile off kilter electronica project full of some tempered atmospheres and some hard-hitting bangers and its surprisingly adept at doing both. Highlights include all of the songs I whose features I listed above as well as CURVES and ZIGZAG. The only real issue with the record is that the front half is way stronger than the back half. There isn't anything really atrocious but the disparity is pretty noticeable when a few songs in a row come off as just tolerable. Ultimately this is a project I see myself returning to a lot this year and has me inspired to dive into anything else that Jimmy Edgar has his hands in. 7.5/10

Harlecore - Danny L Harle

Danny L Harle is a former PC Music signee who has been involved in the label and its progressive pop scene for years now. This appears to be his first fully fleshed out proper solo album, though it's being released through Mad Decent rather than PC Music. The records concept centers around Danny performing as 4 different personas each of which deliver a different sonic approach to their songs on the album. DJ Danny is the most frequent performer and delivers dancefloor ready house tunes with catchy vocal samples and cascading synths. MC Boing delivers a trio of high intensity fast paced electro rap songs with insane pitched up rap verses. DJ Mayhem delivers dense, loud electronica tunes much more in line with what some of Danny's PC Music counterparts have been up to. Finally there's DJ Ocean who takes a much more reserved electronica approach, not quite ambient but much more focused on atmosphere. Generally speaking this record is about as inconsistent as I expected it to be with the DJ Danny songs being a favorite and the MC Boing songs being incredibly entertaining even if the artistic merit may be questionable. Generally the DJ Ocean songs are the biggest let down just because they never really give in to an ambient like atmosphere and always use light vocal samples or to break up some of the quieter passages, but they also interrupt the serenity. While there is some level of versatility on display across the project there are definitely sounds I think Danny does better than others, and thankfully they are some of the most frequent sonic themes on the record. 6/10