Sophia
The Age Of The Narcissist
Cyclic Law
Long-running Swedish ambient/martial industrial act Sophia seems to cycle in and out of periods of activity in juxtaposition to the schedule of Peter Bjärgö’s equally tenured Arcana project. Given that the latter focuses on themes of enchantment, the sublime, and the otherworldly, it perhaps makes sense that the more sinister sound of Sophia has been waxing over the last decade while Arcana has been waning given the shape of the world over that period of time. And that’s not just projection on my part – even more so than Sophia’s previous releases The Age Of The Narcissist acts as direct commentary on a general sense of disillusionment with and disgust for the ails of the present.
Make no mistake, Sophia’s stern percussion and ominous programming has always been suited to themes of misanthropy, but there’s no missing the link between the bemoaning of spiritual and intellectual vacuity on “Plastic Smiles” and the resurgence of oppressive religious populism on “What’s Wrong With People” and the very present zeitgeist. Given the state of things its hard to tag Sophia’s excoriation of environmental damage, greed, and self-obsession as being a consciously disaffected pose rather than blunt realism.
That steely and sober approach to thematics carries over to The Age Of The Narcissist‘s musical approach. Whereas previous LP Unclean hinged on sharp and shocking shifts from relatively placid ambiance to bracing martial percussion, The Age Of The Narcissist is a more levelled-out experience, with a mixture of percussion, heady atmospherics, and a sustained tang of disdain threading throughout. That equanimity takes many forms, from the whispered, grinding lope of “Dogmatic”, to the stabbing percussion of centrepiece “Hunt / Hung”, to the contemplative, processional winds and beats of “Mouth Of Mammon” being offset by detuned, violent samples.
It’s difficult to imbue work whose overarching theme could perhaps be classified as “dissatisfaction” with a sense of grandeur, but that’s really what comes across in Narcissist‘s better moments. Like the best parts of the classic era of Cold Meat Industry of which Sophia were a part, the scraping strings and slowly shifting pads connote the slow operation of some byzantine engine or machinery, the cycling and operations of which can only ever be glimpsed in fragments from a human perspective. That that machinery might be the rote effects of our own failures as a species is a bleak thought, but again, Sophia’s sound and themes feel of the moment right now.
