In May 2014, I followed friends deep into the intestines of London superclub Fabric on a night out I assumed would be like any other night out. I had a growing appreciation for electronic music, but I approached the idea of a “superclub” and DJs that would play such a place as a little overblown. Apart from the headliners, Basement Jaxx, I can’t recall anyone I would’ve been interested in seeing (in retrospect, I should have made sure to have seen Preditah).

That changed when I made my way into Room 2, fairly early in the night, as bewilderingly silicone-fuelled basslines and squelching yet sharp beats fired out from the decks of a young producer. I reeled as the DJ played something I could only comprehend as a cross between K-Pop pristine production sanded to have the rough edges of early-Dizzee Rascal grime, with the unquenchable elation of happy hardcore to boot.

To use a platitude: It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was SOPHIE.

Around a year after this show, she would release PRODUCT. An eight-track album with the objective of packaging up this wild sound the artist had been perfecting.

To listen to PRODUCT, indeed even to properly hear more than two of its songs, is to be forced to approach music in a very different way than one might be used to. Aside from its more general aggressive production style, each track is simultaneously bursting with personality while having no visible focus; no main character. Tracks have all the dizzying persona of a pop star while wielding the mind-bending abstract elements of electronic music.

The character that we encounter, much of the time, is the song itself. The tracks combine to create the singular commercial object, as its name suggests – as the artist said herself when asked by Billboard what genre she would class herself as: “ADVERTISING”. But these eight comprising parts are each objects to appreciate and marvel at in and of themselves, and each, of course, sports its unique, plastic pool party-coded avatar.

No track shows this idea of weaponised commerciality better than LEMONADE – coincidentally the first PRODUCT track that I remember hearing properly and that I subsequently shared with anyone that would listen, and many that probably didn’t. The effervescent hyper-real bubbling that leads us into this clear carbonated drink is realistic enough to make you squint and recoil a little, as if sugary bubbles are popping right in your ears. It’s not long before we dive deep into a transparent soundscape, alive with compressed gas and pockets of air pushing unstoppably to the surface, emerging like great buoyant pads on which to bounce.

The product is clear from the title, the hyperactive vocals lent by artist Nabihah Iqbal, and the recognisably yellow slide that accompanies it. But, this doesn’t stop SOPHIE from bursting out with a 3 Of a Kind-esque admission of excitable love. One that is effervescent and fun but as fleeting as a glass of its namesake.

PRODUCT is commercialised pleasure and gratification. As above, it is sometimes sweet and overwhelming – like a caffeine and sugar-pumped Starbucks coffee – but sometimes biting and acidic – like the dread-headache that follows the sugar-caffeine concoction that gave you all the clarity you wanted for a fleeting moment.

They often deal in immediacy, but to take these tracks as nothing more than facile and grating would be a grave error. PRODUCT is deep and ornate, dressed up with the frilly fancies of commercialism.

Cassie Davis’s experience recording vocals for GET HIGHER – one of two new tracks featured on the 10th anniversary release of PRODUCT – shows this. She gives insight into the creative process, as emotional as it was technical. “I remember being really impacted by the way SOPHIE had what I can only describe as a concern for how the song would make people feel, it seemed so important that people who might be feeling alone or maybe misunderstood would hear this and know that they were in fact not alone.”

Cassie’s voice in the track completely embodies this concern, but not in a feeble way, in a fabulously unstable manner, exactly how someone would sound if they knew exactly what they needed to do to let you know that you’re not so lost and misunderstood.

It’s an anthem inviting us to face something as dour as loneliness with the impervious shield of a polythene-wrapped product but with all the tenacity of a human. The incessant call to action, the communal wave of voices leading into each drop, it’s impossible not to feel lifted by it.

Sean Mullins, the owner of the charismatic male voice that permeates the track, shares his memories of recording the tune, supporting this idea of an empowered identity: “SOPHIE introduced me to myself. She had this unapologetic ferocity for being true to who she was, that was infectious. I remember dancing around in the studio, vibing to the energy of creation in a way that I had never experienced before, devoid of ego.”

Any mention of PRODUCT’s feelgood moments would be amiss not to look to its closer, JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE. A heartbreaker upon its release, but its melancholic wistfulness amplified now on account of the artist’s passing. In this track, SOPHIE crystallises that moment where a lost love is found again and packages it in a playground ballad that screams LG Chocolates, Piczo and Mickey Finns. It is devastating and hopeful at the very same time. It is the heartbreakingly honest dressed up as glittery kitsch.

This isn’t to say PRODUCT is all sweetness. Take L.O.V.E for instance. It’s not a lovesong. It is an abrasive descent into a ket-hole. SOPHIE is unrelenting, letting synth sounds fly that have the squeal of wet air passing through an untied balloon the size of the Grand Canyon – such was her talent with synthesised sound. The four-letter word reverberates in a disorienting whirl.

UNISIL is dark too, hitting like the villainous foil of squelch-pop track VYZEE, grime bassline clattering in rapid attacks. No fun hooks or lyrics here, just the odd cry – somewhere between elated surprise and shock – as we dive back into the pounding plastic bass. As product and person come together, there is inevitably going to confusion… crossed wires… dark recesses, these tracks feel as such.

SOPHIE would go on to be more remembered for her album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, a masterpiece in which she took her talents forward as a weapon of self-actualisation. Glimpses of this eight-track release can be heard and felt in songs like Faceshopping and Ponyboy, but the sense of aggressive commerciality is replaced with a bold and revolutionary pride in the self that shines through. The chasm-esque maw of the track Pretending jumping slickly into inspirational anthem Immaterial is a perfect distillation of just how far the producer managed to go.

But, in PRODUCT, SOPHIE’s penchant for earwax-curdling production is on full display, as is the excitable energy that she brought into the world through her music, packaged in a way that interacted so bluntly with hyperrealism, identity and ironic commercialism. These kinds of themes were explored by her friends in PC Music in the collective’s early days – with many of them carrying her talents and love for music with them into their careers – but SOPHIE’s eight-track release stands above them all, in its sheer sonic shock value as well as in its unabashed love for fun and interesting music.

Give the new 10th anniversary release a listen, and reintroduce yourself to SOPHIE’s PRODUCT.