Trans-Electro: From Hip Hop to Dancefloor Hot Sauce with Sophie Forrest

Bridging the gap between untamed Techno hues and nostalgic recollections of ultimate Electro worlds, fused with Jazz and Soul notions, South African-born artist, label owner and promoter Sophie Forrest lands her spot with finesse. Sophie has an amazing musical palette and background with an incredibly large output of recorded work from Jazz to Hip Hop and Electro under different monikers over the years. Her work clearly demonstrates her highly skilled multi-instrument talent be it performing with an acoustic instrument, jamming with her TR-808 drum machine or crafting her next funky dancefloor banger in Ableton Live. Plus, she’s also an amazing chef, pass me that hot sauce please Sophie! Celebrating equality, ambition and talent in music as one of the nation’s few transgender DJs and producers, Sophie champions trans-representation across the Australian dance community. She was kind enough to give us a little insight into her sound and how she produces:

What do you attribute to your sound and how has it evolved?

I would say my sound originally comes from a lot of Hip Hop and Soul/Jazz. I started writing music not realising that people were sampling, so I spent a lot of time learning music theory. It was a revelation when I found out about sampling but artistically, I was in too deep to want to sample at that point. I have written a lot of different styles of music I am somewhat proud to say my sound remains the same in regard to what I write.

What gear is essential to your sound? Do you gravitate towards single bits of gear for long periods of time?

At the moment I write a lot of Booty Electro so I find myself using the TR-808 (yes the original) quite a lot. I didn’t actually use the 808 much until recently but have definitely fallen in love with the sound again. Other than that, I tend to have stuck with the same tools for a long time I love the DX sound and Dexed and I’m a big fan of the Roland JV-1080.

How does your live set-up differ from what you use in the studio?

I had a Jazz band at one point and did play House Music with a hardware/laptop set-up but I haven’t for a long time. I am looking at putting together a new live set with a laptop, Behringer Model D, MPC and a mic.

Do you hoard gear, is there an emotional connection to music technology or hardware?

I wish I could have kept a lot of the things I have sold over the years, as I do have an emotional connection with gear such as the Akai MPC2000XL and the Roland JP8000. Although you can do a lot of it with Ableton Live these days, I think I just miss the physical nature of them. I’ve got a fairly condensed set-up at the moment. Gear sometimes comes and goes and I find if you get too emotional about it, eventually it just gets a bit too sad when they have to go for whatever reason. I would rather have a simple set-up that is easy to replace.

If you could create your ultimate instrument or piece of music gear, what would it be?

My ultimate machines already exist, Rhodes for keyboards and MPC2000XL for everything else!

Who would be one artist you haven’t worked with (alive or dead) that you’d love to work with?

Mr De would be cool otherwise Damu the Fudgemunk. I am forever a Hip Hop girl and I think these two are up there as some of the best that ever did it! Nujabes and Dilla would be a good option too but in my opinion, Damu is the best Hip Hop producer of all time!

Catch Sophie Forrest at
Transenergy x Stable  x Revolver Fridays, September 23 at Revolver Upstairs

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