Ex-God Machine’s Robin Proper-Sheppard’s new project Sophia is unusual and unusually compelling. The current album The Infinite Circle is a work of stark honesty, stripped-down simplicity and ecstatic sadness. Just as his predecessor Fixed Water, it expresses the optimism borne of grief at the death of a close friend (his bandmate of God Machine, Jimmy Fernandez). The sobering twin experiences of love and death have radically reshaped Robin’s life and they’re the fuel for the gorgeously grave songs of Sophia, the most astonishing emotional punch on the music scene today.