Repress

Proving that a track doesn't have to be lengthy and laborious experience, SOPHIE comes bowling up to Numbers with a second dose of rapid fire neon-lit madness to get heads a-spinning while marking another step towards a full-blown J-pop-meets-electronica zeitgeist. As singular as his approach is, you can hear how the beats powering SOPHIE's tracks reach out to bass weight ravers and teeny boppers alike. "Lemonade" is positively cheeky in its deployment of catchy hooks, garish choruses and occasional bursts of monstrous bass, sounding utterly futuristic in its vision of where chart-minded dance music might well head. "Hard" takes a more obtuse approach that actually seems to distil some of Plaid's starry-eyed melodic wonder and Aphex Twin's Drukqs-era sound design, while the lyrics nod to S&M in the most sinisterly cartoonish way possible. As such, it's a triumphant collision of styles and ideas.