I reached out to Sofia Reta for an interview after digesting their latest record, the tremendous 17-track Bad Luck. They agreed, but said they would like to respond to my questions through a short film. A few months later I received a stunning transmission from Sofia Reta co. The film reads as the Sofia Reta manifesto, answering my simple questions with clarity and conviction, while challenging almost every social structure through their art. It seems that Sofia Reta has a greater vision than simply writing fantastically strange pop songs, Sofia Reta is sort of post everything – pure expression. Sofia Reta wants us to deconstruct ourselves and embrace our duality, to find new solutions to old problems to collaborate with others to create that which we could not achieve by ourselves.
I was delighted to learn that the other worldly quality to Sofia Reta’s music was quite intentional, that the vocals are heavily affected because Sofia Reta is not male or female or old or young. They said that they “hope that people find the time to listen, [cough] and hopefully be inspired to affect change in their own ways”, and that was exactly how I felt. Not unlike how I felt when I first discovered projects like Throbbing Gristle and in turn became obsessed with the Temple of Psychick Youth. The notion that we can effect change in our lives through art or otherwise is not absurd or overly idealistic, perhaps the social structures that prevent us from doing so are.
The video in itself is a thing to behold. “You’ll like it”, Sofia Reta wrote, “it’s soothing”. Set to a sparse soundtrack, a finger penetrates a measuring cup filled with water, we get to revisit the Monica Lewinsky scandal and watch a knife being made. A beautiful creature with high cheekbones accentuates their eyebrows and puts on lipstick. Sofia Reta was also kind enough to send us a transcript of the film on their very own digital stationary, just in case you have a little trouble understanding the distorted sounding narrator.
Sofia Reta operates out of Baltimore semi- anonymously. You can buy their latest album on their Bandcamp. You can also sample their sounds on Soundcloud. Don’t sleep on this wonderful if not uncharacteristic cover of Icona Pop’s “I Love It”. Their upcoming record Darvaza is set to be released digitally and perhaps in a tangible form in early 2014.
