What is Out Of Body Pop?

I (@willsoer) started my first student radio show whilst studying Philosophy in Bristol in 2014. Around this time I was listening every week to Annie Mac’s Sunday night ‘musical hot water bottle’ show, which dovetailed with Benji B’s 1-3am Wednesday specialist show and a load of artists having a real moment (eg: FKA Twigs, Frank Ocean, Floating Points etc) to focus my music taste. Part of what I love about this experimental, but accessible genre of music, what I call Out Of Body Pop, is that we have really seen its renaissance in the last decade or so (sparked perhaps by Kanye West’s 808s/MBDTF period and the xx, two artists that inspired the second most commercially succsesful artist of the 2010s, Drake).

I used to call it ‘Transcendental Pop’, because this intense, expressive sound felt relateably human, accessibly warm, and yet also a tad alien, modern, seperate from the standard narratives of Pop. It reminded me of transcendental phenomenology; the study of stepping back and analysing human experiences – or ‘phenomena’ – in isolation. You try to make sense of this experience without referencing what we know about the outer world, looking down on it from above.

In 2016, whilst taking a Social Anthropology masters degree in Edinburgh, I created a student radio show named Out Of Body Pop. It was focussed on this flexible sound, and mixed in spoken word gathered from smoking areas, streets, podcasts, and a bunch of writing that hadn’t been recorded yet (I would get friends to record themselves speaking). Around the time I revived my old teenage blog with a post about the electronic side of this music, before starting off this blog right here. The main body of this blog collects the articles I have written and interviews I conducted, focussing on music that I find really exciting, that makes sense as ‘out of body pop’.

Who Am I

My name is Will Soer (@willsoer on insta), I’m an ex-tour guide, qualitative researcher, hardcore Phoebe Bridgers advocate, and a lover of music.

More than anything else, I’m interested in people, their subjective experiences and the way they express and define themselves, (particularly through music). I was initially bullied when I moved to the UK aged 11, and it was music that helped me develop confidence and connect with others; I’ve been all-consumingly obsessed ever since (scroll to the bottom of my previous blog if you want to see what teenage frustration smells like).