Hello! This is an expanded version of Product, electronic musician Sophie Xeon's 2015 debut compilation. It's a collection of delectable, confronting pop music the likes of which had never been heard before and made waves upon release. Sophie is probably most well known as a mysterious and influential producer who has worked with the likes of Madonna, Kendrick Lamar and of course Charli XCX; indeed, one of Charli's songs on her trendsetting album this year, brat, both sampled and was about Sophie. The official version of Product is quite brief, so I expanded it with all of the officially-released material from that point in her career and sound - a longer single version, bonus tracks that came with certain special editions, and the one solitary remix to come out of the project, all sequenced together to extend the album's breadth while maintaining its' original cohesiveness. In my opinion, the shorter official version of Product (the first five songs of which are in the order they were released in as singles, from 2013 to 2015) jumps around sonically, never really settling down anywhere; every song brings something significantly new and different to the trable. This expanded version, by way of the bonus tracks places in the middle, makes the deconstructed-club music aspect of the music more prominent, at least to my ears.
While always maintaining a degree of privacy separating her personal life from her work, at this point in her career Sophie was effectively anonymous to the public eye, going as far as using identity-hiding vocal filters in the very few audio interviews she undertook in promotion for this album (when asked why, she replied with her signature coolness saying "I've got a cough"). In that same BBC Radio interview done over the phone in 2013, she said about her song "Bipp" that "[i]t's dance-pop music just like everything else. That's the only type of music that exists and anyone that says anything else is a liar." That, Product very much is, but it's more than that as well!
Sophie didn't just make music, she was an artist in every sense of the world. Conceptually, Product is a fascinating piece of sonic pop art (or at least that's how I've come to see it - lyrical Andy Warhol reference included). Using her entirely-synthesized sounds (often imitating noises from nature) and processed, hooky voices singing pop-esque lyrics, it really is a musical "product." Some CDs were packaged in bubbly silicone cases, and there were a series of apparel items under Sophie's name sold alongside the album. Product is commercial to its very core, while still being wildly experimental (see "L.O.V.E." as an example of this). And just to make things even more perfect, the chorus of the song "Lemonade" was used in a McDonalds commercial! Pop art to a tee, and that's without even bringing up her associates at PC Music and the "Hey QT" project that she was involved in (which you can read about elsewhere). Side note, I think "Vyzee" should be pronounced "fizzy."
I'll now go through the differences between this expanded version and the original release. To be very clear, I am only including songs that were officially released and are closely related to this project. No leaks or bootlegs! First of all is the opening track and Sophie's second-ever single, "Bipp." On all but the vinyl version of this album (which was an actual collection of 7" singles), this song had 44 seconds at the beginning and end edited out, shortening the song to only three minutes. Replicating the vinyl version, I have included the original, unedited single version here. The album continues unchanged until we arrive at the fifth track, "Get Higher," which was released as a downloadable bonus track with the Japanese edition of the album, and is available for purchase online. In Japan, importing CDs from abroad is often cheaper than buying the same album at a record store, so record companies often get an extra song thrown in to entice potential customers. Following "Get Higher" is "Unisil," which was similarly released as a downloadable track with the CD that came with a silicone "product" (or in other words, sex toy edition of the album) before getting a wider single release in early 2021. The only difference after that is that I added Autechre's "Bipp" remix, which strips the processing and adds more space to the song, onto the end of the album, returning to the opening theme in a sense and closing the album out with a nice groove.
Upon Product's release in 2015, Sophie had said that there would be no remixes from it unless they were done by Autechre, and in a sequence of events which brought her career to something of a premature full circle, Autechre's remix of "Bipp" (alongside "Unisil") were put out as singles in January 2021. On January 29, they were released as the respective A- and B-sides of a vinyl single designed to sit alongside those in the original 7" Product vinyl release. And that very night at 4 AM in Athens, Sophie's life was cut short in an accident that can also be read about elsewhere - her death gained her more news coverage than she had ever gotten previously - although I will just add that she might have survived if not for Greece's deep-running crisis in blood supply, and the hospital's refusal to accept a donation from one of her friends. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, she was gone.
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