Gordi

"She said that she watched him die on FaceTime”

That poignant line – from track 10 “PVC Divide” - comes from Sophie Payten’s (aka Gordi) first hand observation working in hospitals during the pandemic.  As she clocked on for a shift, a deceased patient’s family waited in the fluorescent corridor.  Families weren’t allowed to visit during lockout periods, and so had to endure a cold, digital farewell; decades of memories, love, regrets, distilled to pixel.

As a final year medical student, Payten learned to certify death. Beyond just what we see in the movies – checking for a pulse, hearing the monotone of a flatline, announcing the time – the process involves observing a person who's no longer responding. As she looked at their still, waxy skin, Payten says “It made me think of plasticine - that soft, malleable substance, that we can shape and mould in our hands, until we leave it to set in place. I thought about all the ways we are like plasticine in life - how forces we can’t control, contort us into shapes, stretch us thin, and test our resilience. But sometimes, heart-wrenching change can be a thing of beauty.”

“Being surrounded by death made me think about how beautiful life is.”
But in anguish, there is the ecstasy of change. Though polar opposites of the spectrum, they are connected nonetheless. Where eulogy is euphoria.

These moments of transition are captured on her new album, ‘Like Plasticine’, which opens with the gritty, entirely iPhone recorded GD (Goddamn), a reminder of the things we do to carry on and endure – Look around. Slow down. Call your mum. Over sparse, distorted synths, Payten sounds like she's trapped underwater or pressed against a window, looking in on the lives she is wondering how to step back into.