Q&A: Inside Sophia Stel’s Dance Floor Diaries
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY HARRY SUTTON ☆
Photo By Angela Donna
IT’S 4 A.M. IN THE BASEMENT OF VANCOUVER’S PARADISE CLUB — Sophia Stel sits at an unlit makeshift studio in one of the club’s discrete corners, cables and synths sprawled across the top of the club’s ice freezer. The finishing touches of her sophomore EP, How To Win At Solitaire, spill out into the dark. After Stel finishes her bartending shift at Paradise, the real work unfolds from this DIY workshop—a second home, where her sludgy, alternative pop diaries take shape.
These diaries play like something between a confessional and a 2010s pop-house banger. Stel sings of relationships, fears and fragile late-night feelings as spasmodic breakbeats incise her airy, reverb-soaked vocals. She describes her music as something to hear alone with your headphones on while wandering around the city at night, but a listen will have you unsure whether you should be dancing or contemplating life decisions.
This tension between private and public, euphoria and melancholy, defines Stel’s work. She layers unvarnished self-reflection atop thumping club beats, detailing agonizing breakups over dense 808s and viscous drum loops. Her visuals only reinforce this honesty—candid DigiCam photos, music videos shot in dark carparks, piles of cigarette butts serving as souvenirs from the other night.
Stel’s world recalls the era of “Club Can’t Even Handle Me” and “Only Girl (In the World),” reimagined through a Gen Z lens—post-hyperpop, introspective and hazy around the edges. Where 2010s pop once celebrated the high, Stel lingers in the comedown. It’s music for the walk home after the club, where heartbreak sounds best with a pulse.
Photo By Angela Donna
LUNA: Firstly, congratulations on the success of your new EP, How To Win At Solitaire. You’re almost at the end of the first leg of your tour, with a show coming up in LA next month. So, how are you feeling at this point in your journey?
STEL: I feel very excited. I’ve always dreamed just to be able to do exactly this, tour and travel more. I haven’t traveled a lot in my life, so it’s just so exciting. It feels incredibly exciting to be seeing so many places and meeting new people, and I can’t believe people know my songs. I feel very excited right now for the most part. Overwhelmed for sure, but both can exist.
LUNA: Your music started as a bit of a bedroom pop project, crafting your early songs in your room on GarageBand, but you put this new EP together in a makeshift basement studio at the Paradise Club in Vancouver. How did the new environment impact your process?
STEL: What’s interesting is that Object Permanence was half made in the basement of a club too but a different club. My first studio was in the basement of this club called Celebrities, that was more of an official studio. I made both projects half at home and half in the basement of a club. I’ve always worked in those two environments which I think is quite cool to reflect on now.
Spending a lot of time at Paradise—both because I worked there as a bartender and was going there every day of the week—it’s very dark with no windows. I would get stuck there, sometimes because I would get too baked, and it’s terrifying to leave. The only light is one lamp in my studio, and the rest is empty with crazy noises. Sometimes I would be stuck there a long time and the isolation from the outside world was interesting and probably added to my music. This project is meant to feel dreamy, repetitive, with loopy drums and slowed-down breakbeats. Being stuck in that space with just myself definitely impacted it.
On the other hand, Paradise is a community place. I would have a lot of friends stop by to smoke and hang out and listen to the stuff I was working on. I never really did that when I worked at home, because it’s weird to have people over and say, “Let me play you my demos.” But if they came to the studio, I shared a lot more with my friends as I was making it, which was really nice and special. With the first project, many of them hadn't even heard Object Permanence when it came out. With How to Win at Solitaire, my friends were very present while it was being made. That’s because of Paradise; all of us worked there, and it was a second home for a lot of us.
LUNA: You’ve described your music as “private”, and “something to listen to on your walk home.” How do you go about translating that atmosphere into live performance when you have hundreds of people in the crowd? Do you write your songs with live performance in mind, or does that come later?
STEL: When I say my music is private, I don’t mean it shouldn’t be shared or enjoyed with other people. I personally experience music best walking around with headphones and doing my own thing, and I hope that’s how people listen to it. As I make more music, it differs from song to song. Some songs you should listen to privately because they’re very emotional and personal to me, so I think they might feel that way to you as well. I think it’s cool with live music that is emotional and personal because it’s a moment where people who enjoy something privately can experience it together. I’ve noticed that a lot at shows, and it seems like people are connected to the songs. For me, it feels rewarding to do them live.
I don’t think a lot about live performance when I’m writing songs, but sometimes when I’m really excited about a song, I think, “Oh, this will be so fun to do live.” For the most part, I try to think about the song when I’m making it and how it’s existing in that moment. It’s important not to think too much about how people are going to perceive the music while I’m making it, which is increasingly harder to do as you release music to more people. I try to keep things the same as they always have been, creating music for an audience of no one, just for myself.
LUNA: Are there particular songs off the new EP that you were most excited to play live, and now that you have played them live, is there a standout that you’ve enjoyed seeing the reception to?
STEL: I really like singing “Taste” live. When I first made that song, I was playing a show a week later, and I wanted to play it right away because it felt so good to sing, and I still feel emotionally connected to it. “Everyone Falls Asleep in Their Own Time” is so fun to do live; it feels epic. I like singing it a lot. Usually, songs that I really enjoy singing are the ones I like doing live, and it seems to translate when I’m enjoying it.
LUNA: Do you have a favorite place to walk around with your headphones on and get in your introspective bag?
STEL: Vancouver is a nice place to live because there’s a lot of nature and parks. You can walk about 10 minutes from my house and get to an area along the water. You can walk along the water for a long time or just sit somewhere there, and I like to do that a lot. It’s really nice.
LUNA: Who were your biggest musical influences growing up, who specifically influenced and shaped your sound?
STEL: I’ve had many different influences over my life, and I fixate on different things. It’s strange to pinpoint exactly what I’m inspired by, but two artists that really inspired me are Sufjan Stevens and Young Thug. I was really into Sufjan Stevens’ music in high school and have continued to be. I like how he writes and his production; he does a good job with tension, making things catchy and memorable, but also abstract and weird. Young Thug is one of my biggest inspirations for melody and flow. It’s not very obvious, but he’s a good writer and good at understanding how a vocal line should fit in a song. On the more electronic side, production-wise, A.G. Cook has been a big inspiration. Similar to Sufjan Stevens’ production, it’s very beautiful, paying a lot of attention to things building and changing and dynamic mix.
LUNA: I read that you were a big Flo Rida fan. Do you have a specific favorite dance-pop anthem from that era?
STEL: “Only Girl (In the World)” by Rihanna is probably still top for me. It’s beautiful. It’s so sad and so dancy. I love songs like that, and that era was good for it. Songs that are heartbreaking and about being broke, but spending all your money, going through tough times.
LUNA: When I listen to your music, I hear echoes of indie pop vocalists like Caroline Polachek and Imogen Heap. You touched on Sufjan Stevens and Young Thug, but could you elaborate on any specific inspirations you’ve drawn for shaping your vocal style?
STEL: I’m a fan of both Caroline Polachek and Imogen Heap. When I was really starting to learn to process my vocals, I was listening to rappers like Young Thug and Lil Keed. I was influenced by that sound, but I knew it didn’t fit my voice or style of music. So I tried to do that, and what ended up happening is more the style I have, which is more similar to Imogen Heap or Charli XCX. I didn’t listen to a lot of Imogen Heap until last year, and when I did, I understood the hype. Caroline Polachek’s vocals are tuned but also not; she’s a much better singer than I am without any tuning. For me, half of the tuning is an artistic choice, and half is because it’s hard for me to sing on key. My vocal sound has slowly evolved over the years as I’ve tried to understand my own voice and make it sound how I want it to.
LUNA: How did you land on your vocal style? How long did you work on finding the right blend of reverb, auto-tune, layering, all those steps you take to create your sound?
STEL: I’m always working on it. Lately, it’s been cool to let other people record my voice and see what they do and what side they can bring out of it. I’m exploring allowing other people to process it and seeing if they can beat what I’m doing, and in many cases, they can, and I try to learn from that. My vocal chain is very simple: a free plugin called Fresh Air that makes vocals brighter and airier, auto-tune and reverb. I’ve always done that. I don’t like the sound of compressed vocals. I do a certain amount of EQing, but it’s minimal. It’s always been quite simple. I also have a specific microphone I’ve used for years, which might be the biggest part of my vocal chain. I’m always trying to learn more, but I end up keeping it simple most of the time, and then I might do some more layers of something similar. I’m trying to push myself to try new things right now.
LUNA: Your visual aesthetic across social media and album covers feels very Tumblr-coded, with candid photos, obscured faces, even piles of cigarettes. How do you think about visuals as part of your artistry, and how did you come across that vibe?
STEL: A lot of my visual aesthetic starts from when I first thought about releasing a project. I’ve always been into taking photos and videos. I was a skater and around people who made skate videos, and skaters film all sorts of stuff in between moments. I like filming all sorts of things about my life. When I started thinking about putting together a project with visuals, I was stressed because I felt there isn’t a character attached to my music other than myself. The subject of the music is my life: the normal things, relationships, and experiences, and me trying to process and communicate that through music. For the visual world, the only thing that feels right is to do things that reflect my real life. I find things that look cool and are visually interesting to me. I pay attention to things that repeat a lot, patterns that show themselves and become important for different eras while I’m making each project. What am I seeing over and over again? I feel that’s naturally related to the music, so it all fits together. I find my own life visually interesting at this point. I’ve always been inspired by the people in my life, my room, their rooms and the places in my city. It’s constant. I’ve tried to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
There are trends that affect how things look Tumblr-esque. It’s been trendy to have a DigiCam lately. I’m aware of trends. It’s natural to what I like, but our minds are always changing with what we’re being shown. There’s a part of that when it comes to putting things together. Now I have an older iPhone, which is the next trend of things looking slightly more hi-fi, but they almost look worse than DigiCam photos. There’s always something, and it’s cool and exciting to change through different styles.
LUNA: I’m particularly interested in one recent post on your Instagram, a slideshow video of a night where you were smoking joints and playing soccer with a basketball. What’s the story behind that?
STEL: That was actually, I think, my highlight of the summer. I’m really into making slideshows; there will be more dropping soon. It’s a new medium I’m excited about because I make them on iMovie on my phone, and what you can do is limited. I edit my videos in Premiere Pro, so I’m nerdy about it, but I like that you can’t really make it that good.
That night, I was at my friends Aaron and Noah’s place. I was rehearsing for tour in their basement every night. My little brother came with me; he’s in a bunch of the photos, doing the handstand on the basketball. Aaron is the other guy in the photos. I had made a rule that I had to jump rope for at least 15 minutes a day leading up to tour, and in general, I’m trying to do that because I’m a smoker and was pretty unfit, and it’s hard to have enough breath capacity, so I need to do cardio. I hadn’t done my jump rope, and it was 9 p.m., and I said, “Boys, we have to go somewhere for me to jump rope.” We went to the field and had a really fun night, hanging out for ages, playing, jumping rope and kicking a basketball around, because that was the only ball we had. I took a lot of photos. It was a wonderful night.
LUNA: I’d love to hear about the story behind “All My Friends Are Models” and how you wrote the song. Personally, it’s one of my favorite songs of the year.
STEL: A lot of that song I wrote mostly after a night of working at Paradise with all these model friends I speak of in the song. We got off work at 4 a.m., and I went home and was writing a bunch of stuff about it and how I was feeling. I had a moment of realizing that I’m from Victoria, but Vancouver is where I first met my really close friends and the people who have become my family. I had a moment where I grew up without many friends for different reasons.
I was like, “Literally all my friends are very cool and gorgeous and genuinely were actually all models.” I thought, “How did I, someone who always thought I was very uncool, end up in this world where I’m going to the club with all the most beautiful people and doing all these things?” It can sound superficial in the song, but it’s a very genuine song about being like, “Okay, here I am, and now all my friends are models, and I’m in this weird world.” It happened very naturally, but these people I’m so close with have this deep connection, but we’re living this weird life. It’s not that that’s the dream life, but it’s certainly some type of a dream. I can’t keep that one concise because there are a lot of different feelings around it, and the song has a couple of different meanings to me, but it’s a very genuine song about friendship with models.
LUNA: What kind of a vibe in the song do you enjoy creating the most? Do you prefer working on something that's more punchy and propulsive, like “You Could Hate Me,” or something that’s slower and ethereal?
STEL: I try to always make exactly what I want to make, so I enjoy it all. Some days I have to make a sad song because that’s how I feel, and that’s exactly what I want to do, so it feels equally as good as making “I'll Take It” or “You Could Hate Me.” When I’m ready to make a song like that again, the feeling has to be there; you can’t force it. So, to answer your question, it all feels good to me.
LUNA: Do you work on music every day, regardless of your mood, and then let that dictate what you’re working on?
STEL: Yes, I try very hard to find time every day. Even when I don’t feel inspired, and sometimes I’m not feeling any emotion or connection to music, I just sit down and try to make a simple beat. Usually, when I’m actively able to write a whole song that I feel good about, there’s a certain amount of emotional connection to it. I believe that quote “Inspiration will find you working.” I believe very strongly in that with music because it’s easy to say you don’t feel inspired or you won’t be able to make anything. If you let that hold you back from trying, you probably won’t make anything. Many of my songs wouldn’t have been written if I had waited to feel sure and inspired and knew what I wanted to make. I try to sit down and start something and see if a feeling emerges.
LUNA: What's the biggest risk you took on How to Win at Solitaire, whether in lyrics, sound design, or production?
STEL: It all feels like a bit of a risk because it’s so vulnerable. Almost all my songs feel like a risk in that way, especially with lyrics and songwriting. “I'd Rather Be Yours Than Mine” feels fun because it’s a guitar ballad, and I wasn’t sure if it would make sense to people or feel random in the context of all the music I’ve released so far. I try not to worry about it and trust that songs will find their audience.
