Now, who else in the music world is bringing Goffman’s concepts on identity and self-presentation into the genderqueer conversation? Probably quite a lot musicians, actually, but Sophie’s Faceshopping steals the show with its poignant lyrics and ultra violent visuals reflecting about identity as a product to front and consume. Usually, people seem content in acknowledging the counter-cultural implications of Drag and some forms of runway displays of sexualised bodies. Sophie pushes these statements one step forward, underlined and in bold type through most of her videography. Then, musically, she can present herself as both a tailor of sweet, tongue in cheek songs and brutal drops. Atta girl? Atta solid conceptual artist, if you ever saw one.

Unapologetically sapphic and proudly poetic, it rhymes, it sticks, it figures. King Princess got that sweet, coy contrivance, that casual display of a deep, burning fire. She delivers these lines with such a casual attitude it’s hard not to believe it’s rehearsed, like, ‘too real to be true’: she talks about sex where two souls touch, about the holiness of love in a palette of iconic, old-schooly lesbian noir hues sprinkled with religious imagery, criticises Upper West Side hoes with a down-to-earth admission of awe, and drinks to remember rather than forget. Now, musically, she might land at a very safe pop music spot, but she’s out there. Ain’t many fresh, gay girl pop stars with a slightly tomboyish rock attitude, so ain’t no saying she’s Bogarting her place: and she rightly should.

We’ve been keeping an eye on Sean Bowie from his early beginnings, remaining both tense and dreamy, he’s as much of a musical polyglot as you should expect from a musician/producer of the decade, walking carelessly between pop and experimental: be it throwing some found footage in the middle of a song, making weird looping compasses, longing elevator music like “The Feeling When You Walk Away”, ambient laden pop and Alt-rockish tracks like “Noid”, speaking volumes about a very postmodern fear of going outside, being made to take pills and being dehumanised (possibly, with a healthy dash of ethnical connotation). So, yeah, there’s an artist for you.

Sometimes the statement isn’t in the words, but in the throbbing synthesisers like pneumatic metal spiders twisting knobs and pushing plates at the CDJ decks, gaying it up in flaunty semi-underground clubs all around Berlin. Sometimes the aesthetic of the thing is more important than the meaning, this is Lotic’s playground. Rather than a single framed voice, they’re a polyphonic and diverse artist of sonic texture: their latest album, Power, is a display of strength across various axis tailored amidst hardship and struggle which delivers an impeccable and proud result, each piece displaying unique sound design and their own particular brand of beauty. A conquest of sensibility over matter. Baldness aside, they might just be a musical Michel Foucault of sorts.

“Dance music as a political statement” is basically THE trope of music magazines these days, but Jasmine Infiniti is absolutely serious about it when it comes to her production and DJing, two fronts where she’s able to stand up for her sisters on the ballroom scene in NY and all around the world. Representing the House of Infiniti for more than a decade and DJing for about three years now, she has not only the qualifications and trajectory to uphold her title as Queen of Hell, but also scars and wisdom gained as she walked tall around the world as a trans woman who wouldn’t settle for a merely “private” life. SiS is an album that accounts her perspective and the never-ending love of the ball scene, and it’s, quite fittingly, a great production both in scope and narrative.