SASAMI’s identity is anything but subtle. Whether it’s her lavish outfits or eye-catching all-caps moniker, the Bronxville-born artist has made a point to stand out. After the release of three entirely different albums, pulling from a range of genres like nu metal and shoegaze, SASAMI has once again reinvented herself.
This time, pop is the name of the game for the L.A.-based artist’s third record, “Blood On The Silver Screen.” The third record turns SASAMI’s sound into its slickest yet, as SASAMI articulates her vocals over more digestible instruments than her previous records. The 13-track album contains a plethora of pop, opening its game with “Slugger,” a radio-friendly earworm, and closes the 9th inning with “The Seed,” an emotional, metal-esque song coated in layers of bass.
The grand genre shift found on the record is accompanied by an equally grand tour of the same name, which stopped at Brighton Music Hall on May 8, continuing through May.
SASAMI’s identity is undoubtedly multifaceted. Sasami Ashworth is an artist who is a classically trained French horn player, producer, and composer who, as her Spotify bio notes, takes a delicate approach to each musical detail. The front-facing SASAMI, on the other hand, is the identity that Ashworth bursts onto the stage with, accompanied by her discography of techno-pop tunes.
This layered identity reaches a new height on “Blood On The Silver Screen.” SASAMI moved out of L.A. to a rural, quiet oasis in northern California to piece together the project. At first glance, it might seem odd that SASAMI could approach tackling a technologically intensive task in such a rustic environment.
“I was picturing the world that the songs were in, picturing cities, suburbs, and desert, but it took me leaving L.A. and being in a more peaceful place to arrive at wanting to write the songs you’d think that I had written in L.A.,” said SASAMI.“ She found humor in having to leave to make the kind of music normally associated with fast-paced cities like L.A., as many artists seek the city out as a musical haven. Creating these songs away from their inspiration helped them find a home.
“Songs are ideas that exist in their own right and it’s the job of the musician to pull them down and bring them into fruition; when I was in L.A., there wasn’t there wasn’t enough material in the air,” SASAMI said. “When I left and moved to Northern California, I felt like there was just so much inspiration kind of swirling around me.”
Getting away from L.A didn’t just help SASAMI enhance her creativity, it also improved her work ethic.
“When you’re living in a place like L.A. where so much is going on, and there’s so much emphasis on being social and being perceived, I feel like it can be easy to not focus on craft,” SASAMI said, “I feel like with technology and social media, everything is pulling our attention in so many directions, so one of the best things you can do for creative practice is just getting to an area to get you more zoned in.”
SASAMI created her pop-up project in the rural space of NoCal organically– just her and her guitar. Each of her songs begins its life as a simple acoustic arrangement. However, once she has established the song’s musical stem, she begins to decorate the piece in a bouquet of synths, tempos, and grooves underneath the stripped-down cut, treating it “like a remix of the original song.”
“It always feels like being a mad scientist on some days, or it feels like putting everything in the oven, and somehow I feel like 45 minutes [pass] and we get a take,” SASAMI said.
When it’s time to perform the finished product, SASAMI’s style balances both of her identities: Ashworth, who presents the intimate origin of these songs in acoustic form, and the stage presence of SASAMI, who jumps around unleashing the full potential of her tracks.
“I think with the guitar, there’s a physical weight on me; it feels grounding and emotional for me to play the guitar songs,” SASAMI said, “where the other songs I tend to be meandering on stage, running around, a lot of times eating shit and getting like tangled up in my own cables. So a lot of times those more upbeat, fancier songs feel a little bit more risky, but a little bit more dangerous and exciting in some ways.”
For SASAMI, it’s important that her fans feel a connection to her—whether they’re watching Ashworth or SASAMI.
“Ultimately, my goal is that the show is a space where people can be present, feel embodied, and move in a way that makes them feel connected to the music and connected to the experience,” said SASAMI, “so a lot of being a performer is giving people in the audience permission to feel something.”
