A final, posthumous album by Sophie, the pop producer who died suddenly in 2021 at the age of 34, will be released on 27 September.
The self-titled album is the first new music from Sophie since the musician died after an accidental fall at home in Greece three years ago, and the first LP since Sophie’s 2018 debut, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides.
The album was nearly completed when Sophie died, the artist’s music labels – Australia’s Future Classic and UK’s Transgressive Records – announced in a joint statement on Monday. It was “lovingly finalised by those who hold her closest”, including Sophie’s brother and collaborator Ben Long.
In a statement, Sophie’s family said the album would tell “the story of Sophie’s musical journey, adding: “Sophie didn’t often speak publicly of her private life, preferring to put everything she wanted to articulate in her music. It feels only right to share with the world the music she hoped to release, in the belief that we can all connect with her in this, the form she loved most.”
Long has previously said that there were “literally hundreds” of unreleased tracks Sophie made before she died.
“The idea Sophie and I discussed many times was to do one abstract experimental album and then a pop record – this was going to be the pop one – and to keep going on that cycle for years,” he told Billboard in 2021. “I don’t want to be like, ‘We’re going to put everything out,’ because sometimes Sophie didn’t want it to or it wasn’t finished. But it was quite clear with a lot of songs, just from the fact that we had been working on them and mixing the album, that I know the direction a lot of things were supposed to be going.”
Sophie will feature “her most cherished collaborators”, including Kim Petras and BC Kingdom, who both appear on the album’s first single, Reason Why, which was released on Monday.
Sophie broke through to a wider audience with her 2013 track Bipp. Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides was nominated for a Grammy for best dance/electronic album and was one of the year’s best-reviewed releases, with the Guardian writing: “Sophie has crafted a genuinely original sound and uses it to visit extremes of terror, sadness and pleasure.”
Sophie went on to work with the likes of Madonna, rapper Vince Staples, indie duo Let’s Eat Grandma, and pop singers Charli XCX and Kim Petras.