Love Letter To A Record: The Horrors On SOPHIE’s ‘PRODUCT’
Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Faris “Rotter” Badwan – lead singer of gothic UK post-punks The Horrors – has penned a heartfelt ode to PRODUCT, the debut compilation by the dearly departed Scottish producer and songwriter SOPHIE.
The letter arrives on release day for The Horrors’ sixth studio album Night Life, which marks their first new full-length in over seven years and the first to feature their new line-up: Badwan, founding members Joshua Haward (guitar) and Rhys Webb (bass, keyboards), plus new additions Millie Kidd on keys and Jordan Cook on drums. You can stream the album, and read Badwan’s letter to PRODUCT below.
The Horrors – Night Life
When I was asked to write a love letter to a record that changed me, I could have easily picked the Cocteau Twins’ Heaven Or Las Vegas, which I’ve listened to probably more times than any other. But SOPHIE’s compilation album brought with it a different, more personal kind of change.
Sophie and I grew up together near Northampton, and we shared a long series of musical dialogue, rites of passage, jokes, smoking breaks, and first-time experiences. Long before she’d taken her final form, she gave me The Flaming Lips‘ The Soft Bulletin, Bowie At The Beeb, and the Pixies‘ Doolittle, while I gave her [The Flaming Lips’] Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, The Kinks and an early Rough Trade Counter Culture compilation in exchange. By age 15, she was already a professional-level house DJ – playing older kids’ parties, going out to Northampton clubs, and seeing bands at The Roadmenders. We had an unusual friendship, and often moved in different social circles, mainly spending time together one-on-one.
We watched each other’s tastes and careers develop over the following decade. While I moved to London and fell into The Horrors within months, Sophie went to Berlin and disappeared for a while. I remember receiving an email from her one morning, announcing her return to London. I met her at the top of Dartmouth Park Hill, standing by the fence in a long black wool overcoat and a wavy mop of dyed-orange hair, carrying a recently-sampled Handel CD and a wolfish half-smile. She moved onto my street, above a pet shop. She would soon start thinking about transitioning.
Few people championed my Cat’s Eyes project more. I lost count of the amount of parties where Sophie pulled up our Vatican performance on YouTube – and while I often left the room out of awkwardness, I can’t overstate how much her support meant. She wanted her friends to succeed alongside her. We resumed our dialogue – this time talking about soft synths and programming, while I stubbornly tried to push her back to analogue. She took me to her studio and showed me all the sounds she’d been building, including early versions of ‘Nothing More to Say’ and ‘BIPP’.
I didn’t really know what to think of ‘BIPP’ at first; it was so unique that I had no real frame of reference, despite being into Aphex Twin and all the 90s Warp stuff. I described it at the time as “like a balloon bursting in a child’s nightmare”. When she played me ‘Just Like We Never Said Goodbye’, I finally got it. The demo just barely hinted at the teen-yearning girl-group feeling that I loved about the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las – enshrouded by rave synths, promising a beat that never dropped.
PRODUCT is a compilation of SOPHIE’s early singles more than an album in the traditional sense, but I know every track so well – and, as a collection of songs, it captures and showcases her spirit. It’s so full of her personality and sense of humour; an electrified wire of enthusiasm and terrifying carelessness. She spent her life constantly chasing novelty and extremes, with an abandon that was compelling to be around. She had no limits.
It’s four years later.
I still read through her texts to bring her voice back to life for a bit.
I wish more than anything that she was still here.
But her songs are untouchable.
Further Reading
Love Letter To A Record: Andy Bull Pays Tribute To His Late Friend Jack Colwell’s ‘SWANDREAM’
Love Letter To A Record: Polish Club On Oasis’s ‘What’s The Story (Morning Glory)?’
Love Letter to a Record: Skycraper Stan on Tom Waits’ ‘The Heart of Saturday Night’
