{"id":2244,"date":"2021-02-19T11:26:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T11:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sammysworld.org\/?page_id=2244"},"modified":"2021-03-03T19:54:45","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T19:54:45","slug":"sofie-is-not-a-conjoined-twin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sammysworld.org\/sofie-is-not-a-conjoined-twin\/","title":{"rendered":"Sofie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Sofie is Not a Conjoined Twin.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

As Sofie Fatouretchi readies her second studio album, the eclectic Stones Throw<\/em> signee discusses childhood, musicianship, and a made-up lactose intolerance that almost got her mom into trouble.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTOS: ETHAN LOPEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

SAMUEL HYLAND<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is <\/em>weird, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artist-slash-musician Sofie Fatouretchi smiles upon being asked about her relationship with Stones Throw Records<\/a>, the longstanding indie label to which she has been signed since 2019. As a teenager living in Vienna, Austria, she developed an ear for the label via acts like MF DOOM, J Dilla, and Madlib. Some years later, at 19, she was made aware of a job opening posted onto its Twitter account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt said they were \u2018looking for students in California to come intern.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Well\u2026 I\u2019m a student; I\u2019m maybe not in<\/em> California, but I was born there,\u2019\u201d she tells me, semi-laughing. \u201cThat was the only part I actually lied on, in my application. You had to check these boxes, like are you a student <\/em>in<\/em><\/strong> California<\/em>; I was just like \u2018eh.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, with both the slight lie and a noteworthy level of IT experience helping her case, she was temporarily accepted into the Stones Throw family. And – several revolutions around the sun later – she has blossomed into one of the label\u2019s most eclectic young signees, continuing a legacy set in stone by the very artists who first inspired her years ago. \u201cOne of the cool things about working at the label was that they\u2019d frame all these cool pictures of their artists and hang them on the walls,\u201d she recounts later, a grin steadily creeping onto her face. \u201cI was walking down the hallway when I got there last week or two weeks ago\u2026 and there was my <\/em>picture framed!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There\u2019s so much that I know formally, or have been taught- it\u2019s almost impossible to extrapolate what you\u2019re thinking from this knowledge that you have.”<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

As we chat over Zoom today, Fatouretchi is chilling in a residence somewhere in Los Angeles. Just recently, she flew back to the United States from Vienna for two reasons – the first being to film a music video in Las Vegas, and the other being to work on her second studio album. Born in Palo Alto, California, the musician has been made accustomed to the kind of fast-paced international lifestyle she currently leads since youth. When I ask her to take me through a bit of her geographical footprint (\u201cOh, you want the whole low-down?\u201d) she walks me through it as if she has told the story every minute of every day for the past twenty-something years: \u201cMy mother is Austrian, my father is Iranian; they were working in the IT industry at Apple before it was really lucrative; after some financial mishaps – well, I wouldn\u2019t say mishaps – difficulties<\/em>, we moved to Seattle; we would go back and forth between the U.S. and Vienna – I spent one year in Vienna in the fourth grade, for instance – and then when I was twelve, my family moved to Vienna permanently; then I graduated high school at sixteen; I stayed in Vienna for a while; but then at nineteen, I moved to LA for an internship at Stones Throw Records; I was offered a job after the internship ended; I took it; I moved there; then a few years later, I moved to New York to open the Boiler Room<\/em> offices<\/a> there; then I was in London for two and a half years; then I moved back to LA; and then I ended up moving to Vienna.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although it all seems to come out as one breath, there are nuances to such widespread latitude that Fatouretchi is well aware of. For one, she says, having spent a good portion of her youngest years in Austria allowed her to – especially under a father who made it a strict rule – easily deflect internalized prejudices targeted towards her as someone of Middle Eastern descent. It was upon her move to America, albeit, that she quickly learned the distinction between racism that was situational and disregardable, and racism that was systemic and perpetual. “In Austria, even though there\u2019s maybe more, like, at-face<\/em> racism in terms of just old racist people existing and being rude to your face, the system you live in isn\u2019t as racially discriminatory,\u201d she says, sitting back on a couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other end of the spectrum, the crux of having been acclimated to a lifestyle of constant movement through developmental years manifested itself in a childhood lying habit she fostered throughout grade school. \u201cWe would move every two years, and I would just reinvent myself,\u201d she tells me, matter-of-factly. \u201cI was such a big liar as a kid. Not in a malicious way, but, like, out of boredom. The teacher would be like \u2018Write an essay about where you were born,\u2019 and I would be like the Stanford University Hospital sounds so boring<\/em>, so I made up the story that I was a conjoined twin, born on a train\u2026 more because I had a really active imagination, and less because I was (mischievous).\u201d Of several such falsehoods she recounts during our conversation, some of the most particularly striking ones include a lie she told her teacher about owning eight pet horses, and an on-a-whim tall tale about being lactose intolerant that she formulated to avoid drinking milk at lunch. \u201cIt could have just been as easy as me being like \u2018I don\u2019t want to drink the milk.\u2019 But I was like \u2018I have a lactose allergy, and\u2019- you know. The teacher got really mad at my mom. She was like \u2018You should have filled that out in the form!<\/em>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\u201c(The contract a teacher ends up undergoing) says stuff like \u2018you want to educate students to be functional members of society<\/em>,\u2019 <\/em>she recites, head propped up against a resting fist. \u201cBut, like, what does that entail? Whose<\/em> definition of functional, right?\u201d<\/span>\n\n\n

Presently, Fatouretchi finds herself on the other side of the classroom desk. As she works on a teaching degree that she has been able to pursue more and more actively since the pandemic, she has been granted the opportunity to teach classes ranging from high school to university levels, with subjects taught including Philosophy, Psychology, and English Linguistics. Something she cites is that in the adult world – especially in education – one is deterred from being imaginative. When I ask whether she has ever found herself going against this grain in her teaching, the answer is a straight no<\/em> (there are certain contractual obligations that come with being a state-employed educator) – but a duality she brings up in conversation entails the idea that good teaching grants students the tools to formulate opinions for themselves, whereas less effective teaching sees the opinion of the educator forced upon helpless constituents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c(The contract a teacher ends up undergoing) says stuff like \u2018you want to educate students to be functional members of society<\/em>,\u2019 <\/em>she recites, head propped up against a resting fist. \u201cBut, like, what does that entail? Whose<\/em> definition of functional, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Fatouretchi, one foundational experience in which her own definition of \u2018functional\u2019 – not the one given by society – was at play came in her very first violin class at four years of age. At the Suzuki School of Music, first-year students were exclusively taught to play by ear. Those who had perfect pitch were quickly weeded out from those who did not. \u201cI think in my first recitals I\u2019d be playing (Johann Sebastian) Bach, and my teacher, Ms. Nakamura, would just be surprised at the improvisation I lent it, that still matched the piano accompaniment,\u201d she narrates. She\u2019s leaning back in a couch near a window now, reflective and deliberate. \u201cI\u2019ve always had, like, fun<\/em> with it. She was a great teacher because she\u2019d leave those liberties for her students – she\u2019d be like \u2018this is really cool, that the student is doing that,\u2019 whereas the Conservatory (a more prestigious school of classical music Fatouretchi would later go on to attend), I think, drills any kind of creativity out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her present-day musical output, if anything, is beyond reflective of such creative autonomy. Sofie\u2019s debut LP Cult Survivor<\/em> <\/a>was released via Stones Throw this past June. In a direct testament to something she mentions mid-interview about the label\u2019s longevity being in part because of its refusal to cater exclusively to its hip-hop-oriented fan-base, the record is packed from sleeve to sleeve with blurred line after blurred line: \u2018Georgia Waves\u2019 sees her channel the swampy Southern blues melodies of Otis Redding<\/a>; opening track \u2018Hollywood Walk of Fame\u2019 features a chorus-pedal-boasting DIY guitar solo presented shamelessly in its informality; \u201899 Glimpses\u2019 sees flashes of the Cocteau Twins\u2019 haunting, funk-adjacent approach peeking through cracks in the surface. All in all – much like its creator – the record is an ambiguous entity of organized disarray, somehow managing to make the most sense out of the least sensible elements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most defining element of Cult Survivor<\/em>\u2019s recording process, Fatouretchi tells me, is that the album itself was never really meant to see the light of day at the onset. In 2018, Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf would often ask her what she was doing in Vienna, to which she would reply that she was working on music. After Wolf would go on to prompt Fatouretchi to send the songs over, upon hearing them, he would eventually muse to her that she had an album\u2019s worth of content. What we hear on Cult Survivor<\/em> is actually a considerable reduction – out of sixteen tracks originally recorded, only twelve made the cut. \u201cI think the fact that I had the freedom to do this without the idea in the back of my head that this was going to be a record that was going to be released- I think that was very good, because it really helped me to not be too speculative, or critical, of what I was making,\u201d she suggests. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s really important as an artist\u2026 initially<\/em>.\u201d She breaks into a laugh. \u201cAfter you get over that burden of something being out – which, maybe is just a burden for me – it becomes very different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recording process of Fatouretchi\u2019s second studio album is shaping up to be particularly divergent from that of her debut. Our originally-planned interview, scheduled for yesterday, was pushed back to this afternoon because she had spent the entirety of the day recording in her Los Angeles studio with no breaks – at the beginning of our conversation, even, she took it upon herself to apologize for the raspy voice she exhibited as a side-effect. \u201cHonestly, much longer than for album one,\u201d she replies, when I ask what the work for this record has looked like thus far. \u201cI think for album one, with a lot of the music you\u2019re hearing, that\u2019s the first recorded version of the track – there\u2019s no second version, unless I muted vocals or something. With these current<\/em> songs, there\u2019s like seven or eight iterations, at least. And from that, that\u2019s what\u2019s being mixed, and of these mixes, there\u2019s maybe like twelve renditions each\u2026 it\u2019s been a long process, honestly.\u201d Hoisting a glass in her left hand, Sofie explains that going into Cult Survivor<\/em>, her approach was very much contingent upon a burning desire to \u2018band-aid\u2019 the album – put a wrap on it as quickly as possible – before she could hear it enough times to grow detrimentally self-conscious. \u201cThat being said, I do regret there perhaps not being more time spent on certain songs- just with the level of production, and time spent, on the second record,\u201d she thinks aloud, now. \u201cBut you know, I hope at least that it\u2019s something people can view as progression, or development.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\u201cThis ruthless person inside me wants to do everything, and schedules an abysmally tight month or so,\u201d she started. \u201cThen my other, meek and submissive self gets through it week by week.\u201d<\/span>\n\n\n

The sentiment is reflective of an even deeper one Fatouretchi tackles both as a gallery artist and a contemporary musician: creating for oneself, versus creating for mass consumption. The predicament is to a greater extent musical for her than it is artistic. Through painting, she says, she seeks to escape having to adhere to any form of preconceived language or definition – an element that music is difficult to both create, and commercialize, without. \u201cI\u2019m probably the least knowledgeable in a lot of my art classes,\u201d she says of her studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. \u201cI was talking about this with my professor, who is a fairly established German artist, and he was also saying something like the more you know, the more that ends up being a language by which your work is defined. <\/em>And I also really notice this in my music, in that there\u2019s so much that I know formally, or have been taught- it\u2019s almost impossible to extrapolate what you\u2019re thinking from this knowledge that you have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A majority of Fatouretchi\u2019s gallery pieces functionally do, in the context of her professor\u2019s phrasing, exist outside of any one language. In one painting, an indecipherable number of organic bird-like forms appear to flutter against an equally ambiguous background one can only assume evokes sky. In another, exhibited in Justice, Vienna in 2018<\/a>, the foreground of the composition is adorned in what looks to be a forlorn family of dejected people, either filing into, emerging from, or doing something<\/em> otherwise in relation to a faded teepee-esque semblance at left. For even the select few that give viewers as much as a subtle hint at a reality that makes sense, Fatouretchi\u2019s art blurs the line between conceivable and incomprehensible, toggling the limits of language until the construct of making sense no longer has room to breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n