Live Review: Sophie Forrest lends balanced house to her 'Sandbar' EP

18 June 2019 | 2:39 pm | Caitlin Medcalf

Sydney producer SOPHIE FORREST is arguably one of the busiest creatives in town. When she's not chopping veggies at her day job as a chef, she's chopping beats and sounds to compile some of the most versatile and thoughtful dance music we've heard.

She's DJed just about every venue in town, played parties with collectives such as Heaps Gay and clipp.art, and festivals like Dark Mofo too.

Outside of her work as a DJ, she runs her own label, Pomegranate Molasses, which delves deep into soul, RnB and house cuts, the three genres working in tandem to create a synergetic hybridity that envelops the light-hearted edge those sounds have.

She's just last week shared a new run of cuts that she's been working hard on and has packaged them all up real nice as her Sandbar EP.

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The two-track affair sees her deliver two low-key house jams that reflect different times of the day. There are two ends of the spectrum explored here, one being perfect for a sunny day sipping cocktails in the sun and the other reflecting the deep-drawn vibe of a bustling dancefloor.

The EP opens with the title number, the bassline being the hero of the track. As the funk-laden bassline dances jovially along, driving house chords chime quietly over the top. The percussion keeps it simple, yet never feeling underdone. The key to this track is balance, and is something that Forrest has perfectly struck on this one.

Track two, 'Duskbar' sees her experiment with key, the melody shifting in pitch onwards step by step as the track progresses. There's a density of shuffling percussion here that work to fill out the melody, and keeping in stead with the production style explored in 'Sandbar', it's about keeping it lowkey and striking that balance of sounds.

She's hit the nail on the head with this one and whilst the two tracks are appropriate for different times of the day, when placed together, they beautifully act as an apt foil to one another.

Words by CAITLIN MEDCALF

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