Sophia
Fixed Water

THE REVIEW

“Tension, intensity, power, light: the God Machine will seize your soul”.

Thus ended the enthusiastic review, signed by Claudio Sorge, of the debut album “Scenes From The Second Storey” by the God Machine. Never were words more incisive in describing what those music pieces would truly evoke on an emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual level in the listener. It is impossible to even attempt to summarize the experience as “ephemeral” (in a temporal dimension) as it was “dense,” or even “infinite” due to the depth of insights that the group originating from San Diego managed to express, and for the concentration and density of ideas and creativity: suffice it to recall that the points of reference were so numerous and diverse to understand how the feature of “indefinability” was ultimately the dominant element. A creative genius (meant in the romantic sense, but updated to contemporary times) “all-around,” or “360 degrees.”

After the tragic conclusion of that experience in 1994, an extremely painful event that left a visible scar in the soul of Robin Proper-Sheppard, a windless silence remained comparable to the desert depicted in one of their songs. The interruption of the silence, surprisingly, occurred with the conception of the "Sophia" project: an electro-acoustic collective of various musicians, including acoustic and electric guitars (electric and pedal steel guitar), drums, piano, keyboards, and strings. Seemingly far from saturated guitars, conceptual metal, references to art rock, the circular and spiral structure, enveloping and spatial of the compositions, where hypnotic drumming, tight bass loops, and the extremely flexible and sharp/whispered timbre of the singing characterizes in synthesis a melodic declination of noise rock, a powerful and post-apocalyptic suggestion, Sophia stands on new ground, apart yet not free from comparison with referents. Intimate and predominantly acoustic, with a progression where the climax is reached with the entry of strings and piano, of gently electric sounds, these ballads portray a band and its leader, Proper-Sheppard, as a Singer-Songwriter in the context of a “rock-band”; creator of true Poetry in Music, reflective, sorrowful, and with the courage to show the most intimate side.

Compared to bands like Red House Painters, Smog, and Mazzy Star, in various ways authors of languid, static ballads “shrouded in mist,” generally akin to an impressionistic conception of rock, the sounds forming these delicate frames that appear as “windows on the soul” of their Author, appear sharper and more varied compared to the slowness that characterizes part of certain stylistic and genre “canons.” Here, the music seems to be used as a supple expressive tool of emotions, as unmediated as possible. The clarity and sharpness of the acoustic sounds evoke the brightest Nick Drake, the most acoustic and introspective Oasis, and certain Radiohead (the “Ok Computer” period), where the voice (to use the splendid expression of Alex Franquelli) “seems to fall from infinity” upon these arpeggios, while to find a “definition” of Proper-Sheppard's boundless talent, perhaps the only comparison is the early Velvet Underground.

“Fixed Water”, as the title suggests, offers a snapshot of water caught in its repetitive wave motion, a sort of “static and apparent movement,” an existential metaphor of what “passes without passing,” of memories and images so vivid that they can at most float on the surface of the soul. Each of the 10 songs enclosed here, from the allusive “The Death Of A Salesman” to the whispered and bitter “Is It Any Wonder?”, to the absolute, perhaps unsurpassable peak of “So Slow”, gives the almost visual impression of waiting for dawn, which arrives with the entry of piano and strings, illuminating the existential and inner horizon and warming the air filling the distances that separate us. Imagine “Yesterday” by the Beatles played by Coldplay… or by Codeine, as you prefer.

Sophia: perhaps the attempt to conclude the work left unfinished by God Machine, or more realistically, a “second chapter,” which will be followed by others, a chapter in a story where, as Robin Proper-Sheppard once said about his songs, “like in a Michelangelo Antonioni film, there's always an open ending”.