New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Sofie Royer's new album Harlequin is out this
September on Stones Throw. "Klein-Marx" is the latest track from the record, performed in Sofie's native German, and released alongside a video by director
Jasmin Baumgartner and Sofie.
The song is named after the Klein-Marx bridge - or Klein-Marxer-Brücke - that
Sofie passes regularly on the way to art school in her hometown of Vienna. She says: "I sing about wanting to throw myself off the bridge when the going gets tough, the wry joke being that the bridge is not very high and underneath it the Vienna River flows shallowly, running into the Donau Canal."
Harlequin showcases the Viennese-and former-Los Angeleno-musician's passion for her native city's opera and ballet traditions as well as the baroque lyricism of cabaret, medieval performances and the court jester.
Blended with nostalgia for early aughts reality television and American mall punk subculture, Sofie's second album for Stones Throw presents a montage of peculiar characters, vernacular settings and mysterious chronologies that are as theatrical as they are musical. Harlequin weaves a rich tapestry of the city of Sofie's adolescence, while also hinting at her nostalgia for a place that may or may not have ever been real-what she calls the "snowglobing" of her teenage self.
During the making of Harlequin,
Sofie experimented with her own identity through the act of dress-up. From the album's artwork through to her live performances, she adopts the visual aesthetic and gestures of the court jester, clown and cabaret artist.
Sofie says: "When I was alone a lot, I started painting my face like a clown, inspired by Pierrot. Then, when I FaceTimed my friends, they would laugh; and we'd have a really good time. So, I decided to take that to the stage. When I did my first live concert, I dressed myself and my band as clowns. It felt like a protective armor from my regular self. I didn't feel as vulnerable onstage."
Sofie Royer was a student of violin at the Vienna Conservatoire before breaking away from the institution to live between New York, London and L.A., where she became known as a DJ and an original member of Boiler Room.
During her time in L.A., she worked at Stones Throw and brought artists including Mndsgn and Stimulator Jones to the label, as well as releasing her compilation Sofie's SOS Tape in 2016. She released her debut album Cult
Survivor for Stones Throw in 2020.
