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Sophie wins Best Female Artist:The Age EG 2008 Music Awards

Great news! Sophie has won Best Female Artist category of The Age EG 2008 Music Awards. Thanks to everyone who voted!

I’m better now, I can be so careless …”

So starts Sophie Koh’s second album, All Shook Up.

The album comes almost three years after Sophie’s acclaimed debut, All The Pretty Boys, and follows bouts of writer’s block, a mixing console blowing up, and a tennis injury that put Sophie on crutches for three months.

“There have been lots of hiccups and mishaps,” Sophie smiles. “But I couldn’t be more proud of this album. And I feel really ready. Ready to take on whatever comes my way.”

The title tells part of the tale. “I thought All Shook Up was symbolic of the songs because musically they are all very different from each other.

“It also described my mindset during the 18 months I was working on the album. A lot of stuff has happened – relationships, growing up, ups and downs … so it seemed fitting.”

Sophie calls All Shook Up “an album of first instincts”.

“With the first album, I was very young musically,” she explains. “With this record, I was prepared to experiment and take risks. I was a lot more adventurous, and musically that is very satisfying.”

It’s a beautifully constructed album, the result of Sophie’s collaboration with producer J Walker, of Machine Translations fame.

“Greg saw the potential in things,” Sophie says. “In fact, a lot of the songs started from nothing. I really wanted to get away from what we thought was commercial and just do whatever we felt like, and then worry about how accessible it was afterwards. We really trusted each other.”

Sophie will never forget one particular recording session. “We didn’t have any brushes, so Greg bought some bubble wrap and played it on the snare with some chopsticks. I would never have thought of that!”

All Shook Up is an album of beautiful simplicity mixed with musical experimentation. Exquisite melodies meets some sampled beats and layered, subtle production.

“Without the backing vocals,” Sophie says, “the songs would be nothing.”

A highlight is Sophie’s version of a Chinese folksong, Gan Lan Shu (The Olive Tree), which she remembers her parents singing at karaoke.

The song captures Sophie’s wandering spirit, with lines that translate as “Don’t ask me where I’m from, I’m from far away … My homeland is far away … Why are you such a wanderer, why are you such a wanderer? It’s because I dreamt of an olive tree.”

“It’s very poetic,” Sophie explains, “and I always felt an affinity to the song. I didn’t really dissect the words until afterwards. When I realised what it was really about, it was quite spooky, because it kind of described my life so far. I haven’t stayed in the one place for more than a few years. I’m always trying to move on …

“When people ask me where I’m from, I can’t answer. I say, ‘What do you mean, where I was born? My ethnicity? Where I live now? Or where my heart is?’”

For the record, Sophie lives in Melbourne, but was born in New Zealand. Her mum and dad are from Malaysia, but she grew up in Singapore and New Zealand, and was “Unearthed” by JJJ in Darwin.

All The Pretty Boys featured Sophie’s Unearthed song, Easily Broken, as well as the radio hits, Anywhere, Fall Into Space and Silly Thing.

The album was acclaimed across the country. Melbourne’s Herald Sun said “Koh has a voice that drips melodies like honey from a spoon”. The Hobart Mercury called the album “memorable, enticing and honest”, while The West Australian wrote about “one of the sweetest voices you are likely to hear”.

“I loved the fact that reviewers didn’t compare me to other people,” Sophie says, “and that they saw it as a first album, with the promise of even better things to come.”

Sophie also did the Split Enz song Charlie for the double platinum album She Will Have Her Way, The Songs Of Tim & Neil Finn. Tim Finn later called Sophie’s cover his favourite song on the album.

And Sophie was part of The Go-Betweens’ final tour. “That was a real highlight. I felt so lucky to be tagging along with such a great band.”

Sophie has also made two guest appearances on RocKwiz. Her specialist subjects – “The Songs of Sheryl Crow” and “Romantic Men – Beethoven to Brahms”.

Sophie admits she felt the pressure of having to follow All The Pretty Boys. When faced with bouts of writer’s block, she bought a Baby Taylor guitar – “having a new instrument gave me a different sound” – and went to visit her songwriting buddy Tim Reid in the UK and Italy.

“How can I say this,” she laughs, “Tim appreciates the cheese more than I do, and sometimes that’s a good thing. I can be quite self-critical. Tim gives me the confidence that I am heading in the right direction.”

So what does Sophie want to achieve with All Shook Up that she didn’t do with All The Pretty Boys?

“Well, this is a lot more personal album than the first one. I’m a lot more mature and confident, and I hope people can hear that.

“I want people to experience the variety and the shape.

“And live, I’m really excited. These songs present a lot of opportunities to do something different; light and shade,. I’m a lot more adventurous.

“Anything is possible.”

Sophie Koh … All Shook Up.

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