SASAMI: Conjuring the Space

You're a multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer, songwriter, and performer. Which of these roles feels the most natural to you?

I pretty fluidly oscillate between all of them. It's part of the way that being a solo artist in 2023 works. If you want to make a living as a musician you have to do everything, because that's the only way to do it. When I made my first album [SASAMI], I had so many production ideas – for other bands I was working with or playing in – that I didn't ever get to use because we had to go with whatever idea got voted in. So, my first album, before I even signed to a label or anything, was just me being able to be the executive in command of all the production ideas that I ever wanted to do – however stupid! [It] was very production-focused, and the songwriting came from a stream of consciousness style. I didn't really rewrite lyrics; I was obsessed with the arrangements. Then, withSqueeze, I knew I wanted to make a heavy album, and the songwriting and production followed. This grew from wanting the live show to be dynamic, energetic, and aggressive. The album that I'm working on now is still definitely about the live show, but I'm thinking a lot more about the songwriting, lyrics, and grooves – always synthesizing information from working on music, then touring it, then writing and going to the studio. Going between the three always gives me ideas for the next one, and all three parts are equally important. It's also part of being in my 30s: To think a lot more about how my art is fitting into society and my community, as well as a greater dialogue of culture than necessarily my very small scene or personal expression. I feel lucky to have been able to traverse so many different realms of these worlds.

You mentioned the spirit of your live shows, and the focus on performance that led toSqueeze. The vibe at your shows is electrifying, and I didn't know what I was getting into when I went. I'd heard some of your music, but I wasn't expecting what I got. I found myself laughing; just this giddy energy.

The show is so theatrical and playful. It’s basically taking the piss and machismo out of metal. Metal is this intense culture of people. Metalists take even the label of their type of metal very seriously, but then metalists are the dorkiest, sweetest, nerdy people, too. I feel like they're also the first people to admit that the world of metal is a little bit ridiculous from the very beginning. Cannibal Corpse is this gnarly metal band, and all their lyrics are about murder and cutting skin – the most gruesome, gory lyrics – but the lead guy is always posting on the internet about winning plush animals from claw machines and then donating them to people. Super sweet and dorky. I'm pretty into this element of duality that's in metal. A lot of the most famous heavy-rock-world people are wearing hilarious costumes, wear makeup, and are so theatrical and dramatic. To me, it's giving more “drama teenager” than anything. I wanted to tap into the drama and the fantasy. Fantasy is a big part of metal, which I find to be awesome. There are a lot of different metal genres where nature is a big theme. It was pretty clear from the beginning of puttingSqueezeout that I wasn't trying to make a metal album. I wasn't trying to become a metal artist, but I wanted to bring these sonic elements of metal – like double kick drum, drop-tuned guitars, and slap bass – those kinds of sounds that feel like soundtracking a scene of violence, anger, frustration, and darkness. That’s what I wanted to bring to my indie rock music world, because that's the kind of cinematic soundscape that I wanted to create. It was appropriating those sounds. I come from a world where my community is made up of a lot of POC, women of color, and queer people who are very aware of identity politics and how that plays into appropriation in the entertainment industry. I feel metal is such a white dude genre that [appropriating it] is like foraging from a forest that's overflowing with produce. The metal guys who were in my band, they're stoked to change people's mind about the fact that metal could be for everyone. I love hearing that [the live show] made you giggle, because I do think that there's a fine line between joy and ecstasy, and fear and danger. I liked riding that line, and I'm lucky that my audience is made up of cool, respectful, conscious, and diverse people. Even if there was moshing happening and there was a lot of movement, aggression, and catharsis, it was still pretty safe. I was probably the one that got injured the most. I was definitely sacrificing my own body more than anyone.

The interesting thing about moshing is that it's very consent-driven, assuming no idiot’s dragging you into the pit. Everyone who's there wants to be there and have that experience.

Totally. I learned a lot on this tour cycle, because I realized that a lot of the time pits are something that the band opens. There's this conversation that happens between the artists on stage and the people in the crowd, especially for an indie rock crowd not used to moshing. It was more like conjuring the space with the permission of everyone in the room. I felt lucky to have conceived of this vision during the pandemic; of having cute, queer people dressed in leather coming to my shows and moshing safely. It was the best thing ever.

You picked a great moment, because even with people that you wouldn't necessarily expect to have that dark side, there's a lot of embracing of witchiness and stuff like that.

No, totally. I came from a scene in L.A. that was very self-serious and very "cool guy." And – you saw my band – they have longer hair than most of the women that I know. I feel so bad for all the hotels that we stayed at, because the amount of hair that we left in the showers every night, between the four of us. It was probably irresponsible. [laughter] But seeing Jon [Kelley], the bassist, flip his hair; everyone's head banging. And Dylan [Blake] is pointing up to the crowd, being super dramatic – fuck, yeah! This is my kind of energy. Not the self-serious “staring at your shoes.” It was refreshing. I feel the goal was for us to put ourselves out there so much that everyone in the crowd was like, “Okay, I'm going to open up a little bit more tonight.”

I get that. You’ve said, “One of the worst parts of this job is having to be perceived all the time.” How do you hope to be seen?

Yeah, it's funny, because I feel metal is probably the genre where there's the greatest potential for unconventionally attractive people to be commercially successful. But, because I'm still in the indie rock world, I still get viewed in this indie music lens of beauty standards. I'm currently in a femme-fronted band, so there's always going to be that kind of thing. Luckily, because I was playing into the theatrics and costumes, it was fun for me to dress up. It was fun for me to interact with the fashion of it, and for people at my shows to feel like they have an excuse to also put on a costume, I liked that part of it. There was an era where artists had a winter season, where they retreated from the public eye, worked on music, and disappeared. And now artists have to be around all the time and are expected to constantly feed the social media algorithms to stay relevant. Those kinds of things are demoralizing, but I also feel grateful that I even get attention from anyone, that I dreamed up such a bizarre idea for theSqueezealbum, and that it actually happened.

Yeah. It seems like the most bizarre ideas are the ones that inspire people for generations.

If something can saturate your mind and your heart in the most DIY way, then, when you actually have a huge production budget behind it, it's going to be so insanely potent. I feel grateful that we got to perform it, on so many different levels. We had smaller shows, then we were opening for HAIM at stadiums and able to perform where we had proper lights. It’s definitely a show that is best in a dark room with lots of scary, haunted house lights, for sure. I learned a lot about the importance of lighting on this cycle.

That's cool.

I grew up in a scene that was very purist, and I'm grateful for it. I got my background working on tape machines and learning about gear – not comping, just punching in and doing it the real old-fashioned “by the book” way. "Don't use tracks on stage." "Live shows are only live performers." That was good, in some ways, because it made me not cut any corners and develop all my skills, my ears, and my understanding. However, it’s also a little bit short-sighted because not everyone at a show, and not everyone listening to an album, is a professional musician. Now, my goal is less to impress the five percent of people in the room that know what's happening, and more just trying to create an emotional experience foreveryone. If I'm only thinking about the logistics being impressive or legit, then I'm not zooming out and thinking, “Is this creating the most effective experience?” That's the thing with the lights, or using backing tracks. I started thinking more about creating a world for a non-musician, for someone who's just coming to a show. It's not like the older and more experienced I get, the more that I want to get more and more legit. I want it to have the most impact emotionally, which actually makes you not give a shit about the legitimacy of the gear. It's not a shortcut to use a MIDI tone on your iPad to get a sound that feels like fairy dust if that sound feels like fairy dustmorethan using an analog synth. It doesn't matter. I have seen how even the best ears can be tricked. At the end of the day, it's just physics, right? They're just waveforms, and you can get to a certain shape in many different ways.

That's such a great point. You've mentioned in previous interviews that you're inspired by nature, and lately I've noticed a whole lot of fungi popping up on your Instagram. Will this fascination intersect with your art?

Yeah, because the job is so inherently social, it's made me go in the absolute opposite direction. When I'm not on tour, in a studio, or with people, I want to be alone and not inside. During the pandemic, I was lucky to be living in a house with Kyle Thomas (King Tuff) and Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and I was lucky to be able to produce all three of our albums at the studio that we had there. That's the place where I realized how much creativity can be pulled out of you when you're outside going for a walk. It's important to take your mixes out of the studio. I'm very anti giving bounces of mixes to artists that I'm producing at the end of the day. The most valuable thing that we have is perspective; fresh ears when we come back in the morning. It's better. But there is something to be said about taking a break in the middle of the day, bouncing some mixes, going for a walk, and listening. Going outside and going for a walk while I'm working in the studio is never a waste of time. When you go outside you realize that most of the world is outside. Most organisms are not human. Even though we love to think we're the majority, and that our energy takes up the energetic majority of earth, it's not true. It's been important to my artistry to remember, and to be humbled by that and remember that sound is nature. All sound is physics. Going back to the conversation about social media and being perceived – I find the music industry to be incredibly uninspiring. I don't love being stuck on Instagram and TikTok, hearing about record advances, recouping advances, and selling tickets – all these stupid, non-artistic, non-musical, non-creative conversations that we have to have if you want to be privileged enough for music to be your job. I have always said that the brain is the original model for the algorithm, and your only control as a human is what you're putting into the algorithm of your brain and spirit. I'm very intentional about what I put into my algorithm, because I know it could just be regurgitated culture from my phone. I refuse to let that be the majority of my brain algorithm. I've become inspired by how naturalists poetically talk about nudibranch sea slugs or slime molds that are completely microscopic. The way that scientists talk about ecologies and environments and sustainability is much more artistic to me, and it's not the fault of artists as a whole. All my best friends are professional musicians, and all we talk about is contracts and blah, blah, blah. I'm sure that the biology world has its own versions of human corruption and toxicity, but, because it's so new to me, I only see the romance of it all. I have been studying music professionally, classically, and educationally since I was a child, so I know so much about music, the music world, and music industry. It's refreshing to know nothing as an amateur mycologist. With music, I can't unlearn what a I, IV, V chord progression is. I can't unlearn what the sound of a shitty cymbal sample is compared to a good sounding one – I can't undo those things. There's something romantic about being a novice.

You mentioned how your best friends are all incredible, creative people. Can we talk about your creative community?

I was lucky to grow up in Los Angeles. Even though my background was in classical music, I grew up going to The Smell and the Troubadour, going to house shows, and going to rock shows. My dad was always making me mix CDs with Dire Straits, The Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac on them, and my mom was playing opera. I grew up in a very mixed classical and rock world environment. I went to LACHSA [Los Angeles County High School for the Arts] and was introduced to the indie rock or punk world. Then I went to classical music conservatory. When I came back, it was like my nerdiness was my superpower, whereas it wasnotmy superpower growing up. It became my superpower when I reentered the rock space, because I was able to work under Nate Walcott, who plays in Bright Eyes and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He does a lot of film scores, string arrangements, and horn arrangements for artists like Mavis Staples and Jenny Lewis. He took me under his wing when I moved back from Eastman [School of Music]. He would send me a demo and ask, “Can you transcribe the chords and make a Sibelius [notation software] template?” So, after conservatory, I got to be bilingual between the classical written music world and this more experimental, magical, culturally relevant world of rock, folk, and pop music. Then I started joining rock bands, played in Cherry Glazerr, and was touring a lot. When I began writing my own songs, I made my first record with my genius little brother Joo-Joo [Ashworth] and Tomas Dolas, who have an analog studio in Los Angeles called Studio 22. I've been in this world for such a long time that, over the years, I've made so many different friends in so many different capacities, and I gained a reputation for doing a lot of different things. With the French horn being my main instrument, it was so hard that everything else just seems like a hack. The classical music world is so strict and gnarly. In the rock world, if you fuck up people love it. I started to invest all my time in this world, and, as I transitioned into being a solo artist, I had so many friends – Michelle [Zauner] from Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, my friend Laetitia [Tamko of Vagabon], the Haims [of HAIM] (who I went to high school with), Lorely [Rodriguez] from Empress Of – who are female front-people, giving me advice, looking out for me, giving me feedback, taking me on tour, and being supportive in every way. There was an earlier generation of women in rock music where it felt a little bit more as if the space was finite, like there's only so much space for an Asian woman rock band or something. I think that there was a turning point where everyone was like, “What if we band together and we support each other?” There's an infinite amount of space for every person who calls themselves an artist, whether they know it or not, because all people are artists. Some people are just stupid enough to want to make it their job! [laughter]

Absolutely!

Finding my crew of people who are endlessly supportive, non-competitive, and ferociously protective of each other has beeneverythingfor me. I was a music teacher. Teachers make very little money compared to other people, but I would still at least have [had] a stable job. Now it's not stable – I'm lucky, but it's definitely not stable. It feels grounding to have a community of people who are so supportive – and, for better or worse, quick to call each other out on bullshit, too. That probably is why so many femme-fronted or non-cis man fronted acts are surviving in this industry. Women are finding a way to not die at 27; they're getting therapy, eating vegetables on tour, and kicking everyone's ass. They've hacked the system.

Tell me about how you and Chris Coady [Tape Op#113] collaborate on mixes.

That was an interesting situation. It was the pandemic, and we couldn't be together while working on it. He'd mixed the Hand Habits record [Fun House] that I produced earlier in the year, so I already had a workflow with him. He would stream the sessions, and I would listen live then make comments – ask him to add a certain EQ, compression, or whatever characteristic elements. Then he would tweak them or put them through his gear, stream it, and we would listen. Sometimes he would screenshare, too, so we could see exactly what the session looked like. There was something really nice about that mixing process. A lot of the time I would have my laptop plugged into big, good sounding speakers and let Chris work. I would just listen and shoot off auditory feedback without even looking at the screen. Some people don't like mixing. I love the process of mixing so much. I'm the kind of person that cares about finishing salt. I like to make sure that my food is perfectly seasoned, and I feel that way about mixing: none of this shit matters if it doesn't get mixed well, because people only hear the final mix.

When you're tracking on tape, what's the gear?

We used an MCI JH-16 8-track for a lot of the Hand Habits and most of the King Tuff sessions. We tracked drums, bass, and guitars on the 8-track and then we would bounce it down to Pro Tools and layer from there. I recorded a lot of [my record] at Ty Segall's studio [Harmonizer Studios] in Topanga, and he had Tommy Lee’s [Mötley Crüe] old Studer A827 24-track with flames painted on it, so we had a lot more tracks to play with. He was getting a little bit closer to the Joe Chiccarelli [Tape Op#14] mic numbers – not quite that far, but more like ten mics on the drums as opposed to doing six. It's fun to have more options and be a little bit more experimental with the overheads. We put Coles [4038] behind the drummer's arms for some [takes]. The real star was Ty’s [Neumann] U 67 mic that he had just gotten that sounds amazing on everything.

You've spoken about your fondness for your Sennheiser MD 441 mic and Universal Audio's 1176 compressor, both of which you used frequently onSqueeze. What favorite gear, instruments, or plug-ins did you have to leave off of the last album because they didn't fit the aesthetic?

I didn't use my French horn this time, unfortunately. I'm hoping to use it on the next one. I got to use so much good gear because it was such a fusion album: Ty’s multiple [Highland Dynamics] BG2s, 1176s, [Eventide] H949 Harmonizers, the Trident 88 console, the [Neumann] U 47, the Coles, the 441, and all the good mics from Ty and Kyle [Thomas]’s studios. I got to use a real piano, a Moog Minimoog, and a [Sequential] Prophet-5 synth. The fidelity is all over the spectrum. I would say the main restriction was that I was stuck in our home studio. I didn't get to work in a lot of other studios, so I didn't get to branch out. On the next album, in terms of new gear, I'm hoping to be a lot more collaborative and to be inspired by the spontaneity of being in new spaces. Last month, I got to go into the studio with Matt Champion and Romil Hemnani from Brockhampton, and they are on a completely different level with the pop/hip-hop world of recording full jam sessions, then having access to those to take a little sample and use as a loop. I'm getting inspired by Ableton [Live], [Apple] Logic, and some of the more creative DAWs. In this type of electronic space, it's less about the gear and more about your brain as the gear.

What are some of the recordings that you return to for inspiration?

Because I'm such a dad rock enthusiast, Fleetwood Mac'sTuskis the gold standard for me, in terms of snare sound, interesting vocal pads and vocal arrangements, and just beautiful, beautiful tones.Tuskis such a perfect album – spending the contemporary worth of $3 million, it’d better sound good. It’s a sonically perfect album, and so quirky in a lot of ways. Recently, when I'm writing, I have this thing where I try not to listen to music made within the last 15 or 20 years, because I'm so paranoid of accidentally plagiarizing. I've been listening to a lot of earlier and mid aughts Britney Spears albums. That's the cool thing about growing up: Your taste is always changing. It's humbling. I've gotten into what I would call shitty aughts production, and I'm fascinated by it right now. My first album was intimately honest, the second album was brazenly aggressive, the next album is definitely going to be very into “guilty” pleasures. I am fascinated by pleasure, joy, and ecstasy, and how music plays a role in humans experiencing that. It's such a privilege as an artist to be able to cook something up that will create an emotional experience in people. Because I've played so much in the dark arts of sadness and aggression, I'm excited to tap into joy, dancing, and hyping people up, and to see what kind of production tricks and tools are going to be employed to get into that new world.

I can't wait.

Yeah, I'm excited. I want my music to always have space for theater and play, creativity and wildness. Being a music teacher definitely helped me shake some of the pretension of the classical world, and that's always going to be a part of my musicality.

Yeah, that's awesome. Is teaching or mentoring something you would want to continue?

Of course. I'm very anti-gatekeeping. No one's inventing anythingreallynew right now. We're in a very fusion era. Everything is "your mom's y2k jeans are back in fashion" type of energy, even in the arts. I believe in the pleasure and privilege of using sound to facilitate human emotional experiences, and to also be able to help creative people understand how to use gear, DAWs, and arrangement methods – anything to create music that facilitates even more ecstatic experiences. That's something I want to invest in. I've been a beneficiary of so much goodwill and so much help, so I'm happy to always pay it forward.

www.sasamiashworth.com