Posts Tagged ‘Sasami Ashworth’

SASAMI – ” Mess “

Posted: May 5, 2020 in MUSIC
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SASAMI shares new track "Mess"

In March 2019, Los Angeles songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sasami released her self-titled debut album. Its ten tautly melodic rock tracks originated as a string of demos recorded straight to her iPad while on tour, and described the surprising ways that one’s relationships—with lovers, with friends, with oneself—can shift in a single year. The prolific Sasami (aka Los Angeles based musician Sasami Ashworth) via Domino Recordings. Last month she shared a brand new song, “Mess,” via a lyric video for the track. Ashworth says “‘Mess’ is where I’m at now” and that she wanted to release a new song to honor the one-year anniversary of her debut, before moving on to her sophomore album.

Ashworth had this to say about the song in a press release: “I started making my self-titled album almost three years ago. Since then I’ve fucked other people, healed bad relationships, broken new good ones, found more joy, more anger and everything in between. ‘Mess’ is where I’m at now. I wanted to end the year of my first album campaign with one last sentence before I crack into the stone slab of my next album. This time I didn’t want to provide any visual counterparts. I just want people to listen.”

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry9mzupDly0

When Sasami’s self-titled album was announced she shared a self-directed video for the new song “Jealousy,”. Then she shared a video for another new song from the album, “Free.” The song featured backing vocals from Devendra Banhart, although he was not in the video, Then Ashworth shared a video for “Morning Comes” that featured her grandmother hosting a cooking show where she teaches you to make kimichi. The album included the previous singles “Not the Time” and “Callous.”

Sasami earned acclaim from critics: “a powerful first effort” according to Pitchfork; “one of the best debut rock albums of the past few years…incessantly replayable” via FLOOD; “impressive: finely crafted and introspective” per NPR.

Since then, Sasami has toured internationally, released a holiday 3-track single titled lil drmr bb, and curated an issue of the zine Yes Plz.

SASAMI – ” Sasami “

Posted: December 7, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Image may contain: one or more people, shoes, sky, outdoor, water and nature

No wonder Sasami Ashworth sometimes delivers her stage banter in an alien voice: To listen to the dour, greyscale rock songs of Sasami is to learn what it’s like to live and love as a human on earth. On “Morning Comes,” she alternates quiet, driving verses with sweeping, blood-boiling choruses and implores her former lover to move the fuck on. On “Pacify My Heart,” she treads a sluggish pattern of melancholic guitar plucks toward accepting that she and an ex will never quite be on the same page (plus, “Sometimes I wish I never met you” is the best opening-line burn since last year’s winner in the category, Forth Wanderers’ “Nevermine”). Both tracks end in extended, harrowing guitar outros that wordlessly depict Ashworth’s respective growth and ire and mark two of the album’s most cathartic stretches. Sasami, it turns out, is human after all.

Sasami Ashworth isn’t the first indie rock musician to suffer heartbreak, but her debut album SASAMI is among the sourest, most dissonant breakup records in recent memory. An LP about “everyone I fucked and who fucked me last year,” SASAMI chronicles how touring poses challenges to relationships (“Not the Time”), how unequal desires topple romances (“Pacify My Heart”), and how friendships, too, can fail (“Callous”). Ashworth’s caustic but not overwhelming guitar acrobatics—which she in part credits to her brother JooJoo Ashworth, of fuzz-drenched shoegaze institution Froth—pair with calmly delivered lyrics to propel her bitter dirges beyond the standard indie-rock sound of romantic fallout. The tales she recounts give her plenty to be mad about, but even as her guitar scythes through its surroundings, her music rarely rises to a full-on roar. In restraint, Ashworth finds the power to heal.

SASAMI ASHWORTH – ” Sasami “

Posted: September 3, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Ashworth’s songwriting often presents itself as a lens through which the listener can see themselves, dissolving barriers between the artist and audience.

Sasami Ashworth’s debut solo offering is a sidestep away from her previous output with Cherry Glazerr and into the fog. It’s fuzzy and melancholic, with train-of-thought musings that feel both self-prescriptive and healing – a sonic processing of emotions with broader relevance and appeal. It poses singular questions of love and loss, finding solace in their universality: “Thought I was the only one/Turned out I was everyone.” Sasami – “Free (feat. Devendra Banhart)”, from the debut self-titled album, out now on Domino Records

SASAMI (Sasami Ashworth) has been making music in the Los Angeles area, in almost every way you can, for the last decade. From playing French horn in orchestras and studios and playing keys, bass, and guitar in local rock bands (Dirt Dress, Cherry Glazerr), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Vagabon, Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits, etc.) and producing on tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass.

She spent the previous two and a half years touring the world non-stop playing synths in the band Cherry Glazerr and is now taking a turn to focus on her own music.

The video for “Take Care” starts out pleasantly enough—Sasami wakes up in a rowboat floating across calm blue waters. As grainy shots of the artist lying in the boat flash by, the scene gives the impression of a vintage film memento. She sings the lines, “You don’t need my help anymore / I tried to show up at your door.” But soon enough, Sasami starts to let out some hostility, tagging a wall with black spray paint and then, well, beating the living hell out a car with a baseball bat. Finally, we see her lighting a shrine of personal effects on fire in the desert and screaming at the burning pyre.

“Take Care” features on a brand new digital 7” from SASAMI. SASAMI’s debut self-titled album is out now on Domino Recording Co.