The great tragedy of the hyperpop producer Sophie was that it took her death in 2021 for many music fans to become aware of her avant-garde electronica. Her fatal fall from a rooftop in Athens at the age of 34 was met with an outpouring by friends and admirers including Charli XCX and AG Cook, the PC Music label founder who shared Sophie’s bigger-is-better artistic outlook.

To many beyond her immediate circle, that chorus of grief was the entry point to her glitchy, hectic techno. For that reason, the terrible paradox around her posthumous new album – titled simply Sophie – is that it is perhaps the most anticipated of her short, critically-acclaimed career. That’s a shame because, while there is much here to celebrate, the record (her second official studio album following 2018’s Grammy-nominated Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides) is, in its totality, an uneven and sometimes challenging listen.

There are real highlights on a project overseen by the artist’s brother and sister, Benny and Emily Long (working from Sophie’s largely completed recordings). The catchier moments are straight-up gorgeous. Punchy pop princess Kim Petras conjures a disco neverland against an onslaught of house beats on the thrilling “Reason Why”. The same exuberant spirit crackles through autumnal banger “Why Lies”, featuring R’n’B duo BC Kingdom and dreamy LA vocalist Liz.

But these highs are offset by experimental interludes that feel as if they belong to a different, much less accessible record. The sinister spoken-word piece “The Dome’s Protection”, with Russian producer Nina Kraviz, serves as an early dystopian sign-post. It starts with a robotic voice repeating “unpredictable reality” over a Blade Runner-esque shiver of synths and turns steadily bleaker. The 70s sci-fi chill is ratcheted up further on “Berlin Nightmare”, a brutalist electro avalanche built around a beat that clatters like a jackhammer on a busy street.

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Sophie was that rare modern pop figure who stayed out of the spotlight even as her cult following grew. Little was known of her life beyond the fact that she drew artistic inspiration from her identity as a trans woman (even her hometown has been widely misreported as Glasgow, leading to a common misconception that she was Scottish, when in fact she was born in Northampton and later moved to London). That mystery is set to endure: there are few additional insights into her personality or worldview across a bleak and emotionally withholding swansong. She is an enigma throughout, stubbornly resisting the trend in modern pop to inject a musician’s personality into every aspect of their art.

Her family deserves immense credit for completing the album. For existing fans, the record is an opportunity to say farewell to a groundbreaking artist. But for newcomers who only discovered her after the fact, Sophie is a confounding listen – catchy one moment, unsettling and jarring the next. Despite the best intentions of all involved, it makes for an uneven representation of a voice so cruelly taken before her time.

Stream: “Reason Why”, “Why Lies”

Locals in Dukinfield, Greater Manchester, were shocked today as the River Tame became covered in mysterious foam. Roads and cars were blanketed in white bubbles, carried by the wind. Resident Sam Pedder, expressed disbelief, saying it’s the worst he’s seen in 34 years. An Environment Agency spokesperson thanked the public for reporting the incident and is investigating the cause, suspected to be pollutants dumped upstream.

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In an article for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), authors Jason Kelly, Aaron Mackey, and Joe Mullin argue that updates to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) aren’t enough to fix its core First Amendment issues, which will endanger LGTBQ youth, young people seeking mental health information, and many other at-risk communities. EFF contends that “KOSA remains a dangerous bill that would allow the government to decide what types of information can be shared and read online by everyone.

It would still require an enormous number of websites, apps, and online platforms to filter and block legal, and important, speech.” In 2022, lawmakers were under extreme scrutiny by advocacy groups, including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, who believed KOSA would suppress critical resources for LGTBQ youth and restrict access to online communities. 

The newly revised KOSA bill is updated with a “duty of care” that requires platforms to “exercise reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature” to mitigate harms to minors, which are outlined in the act, such as self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, among others. But EFF posits that because there is no case law defining “reasonable care,” platforms are put in legally compromising positions for hosting otherwise legal content on their websites, such as information about support groups for vulnerable and marginalized youth and suicide prevention resources. 

EFF maintains, “censorship is not the right approach to protecting people online, and that the promise of the internet is one that must apply equally to everyone, regardless of age.” 

Corporate outlets, such as the Washington Post and New York Times, have covered KOSA and its subsequent adjustments by lawmakers but have not examined the ambiguity of some of these updates and their implications, such as its “duty of care,” which EFF has called a “duty of censorship.”

For more information about this topic, see Steve Macek’s Project Censored recent Dispatch about KOSA and avram anderson and Shealeigh Voitl’s Dispatch about related legislation, including the EARN IT Act.

Source: Jason Kelley, Aaron Mackey, and Joe Mullin, “Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 15, 2024.

Student Researcher: Vincenzo Champion (City College of San Francisco)

Faculty Evaluator: Jennifer Levinson (City College of San Francisco)

Good morning. In today’s newsletter:

• Saudi Arabia prepares to abandon its oil price target

• China’s accelerating green transition

• How a Chinese billionaire’s Silicon Valley splurge caught the FBI’s eye

But first, China’s leaders have vowed to intensify fiscal support for the world’s second-largest economy, raising market expectations for more intervention just days after the central bank announced the biggest monetary stimulus since the pandemic.

The politburo, led by President Xi Jinping, pledged yesterday to “issue and use” government bonds to better implement “the driving role of government investment”. The comments come as analysts warn that China is in danger of missing its official economic growth target this year.

The politburo usually does not hold economic sessions in September, suggesting “an increased sense of urgency” about growing deflationary pressures, Morgan Stanley analysts said.

But they said China’s government did not yet appear to have reached a “whatever it takes” moment on the economy. Here’s more on the politburo’s statement and how markets reacted.

And here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: Japan publishes August trade statistics and China reports industrial profit for the same month. On Sunday, Vietnam reports September inflation data and third-quarter GDP.

• Japan leadership vote: The Liberal Democratic party holds a leadership vote, in effect deciding the new prime minister. Here’s the crowded field to succeed current premier Fumio Kishida, who said last month he would not seek re-election.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: Saudi Arabia is ready to abandon its unofficial price target of $100 a barrel for crude as it prepares to increase output. The prospect of Riyadh ditching its target is a sign that the kingdom is resigned to a period of lower oil prices, according to people familiar with the country’s thinking.

2. A company backed by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and Hellman & Friedman, BlackRock and Singapore’s GIC is preparing one of the largest debt-fuelled dividend payouts in private equity history. Belron, the world’s biggest windscreen repair company, is in talks with lenders to raise €8.1bn through new bonds and loans to finance the €4.4bn dividend.

3. New York City mayor Eric Adams has been charged with fraud and bribery over an alleged long-running scheme to solicit cash and luxury travel from Turkish government officials and other wealthy foreign donors. The explosive charges mark the first criminal case in modern history against a sitting New York mayor.

4. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed yesterday that Israel would press on with its offensive against Hizbollah in Lebanon, casting doubts on a US-led diplomatic push for a ceasefire to prevent a full-blown war. Netanyahu spoke in New York, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly today.

5. Global companies have stepped off the sidelines in recent months to pursue blockbuster takeovers of rivals, with high-profile transactions such as Mars’s purchase of Kellanova and Verizon’s takeover of Frontier Communications spurring hopes of a dealmaking revival. While the overall number of deals sank to a nine-year low, bankers said boardroom sentiment had become more optimistic.

The Big Read

The scale and pace of China’s transition from fossil fuels has smashed international forecasts, exceeded Beijing’s own targets and put the rest of the world on notice. But to wean the country off coal, Chinese authorities need to push through a politically toxic shake-up of the electricity system, a long and thorny process that has already dragged on for decades.

We’re also reading . . . 

Graphic of the day

Could this radically shaped plane change the future of commercial flying by 2030? Inspired by the US Air Force’s B-2 stealth bomber, JetZero’s new aircraft promises to be both less noisy and more fuel-efficient.

Take a break from the news

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Additional contributions from Gordon Smith and Tee Zhuo