SASAMI announces self-titled debut album for March
9th January 2019
Los Angeles-based artist SASAMI has announced her self-titled debut album with the release of a video for its lead single, ‘Jealousy’.
On the video, SASAMI says, “The whole ‘Jealousy’ video was born out of inspiration from the scene “Bruce Vs Chocolate Cake” from the 1996 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’. I wanted it to be kind of like a filmed version of a weird play. I am a witch creature and my sidekick, Gobby, and I dance in our painted backdrop lair and plot mischief. Luckily our havoc bears liberating ends as the bewitched are released of their socially-expected, self-imposed obsessions and rituals. I wanted to make something grotesque and creepy and funny, of course.”
If you've ever drafted an overly long text to someone and decided against sending it, then you'll probably hear something of yourself in SASAMI, out March 8th 2019."It's a mix of a diary and a collection of letters, written but never sent, to people I've been intimately involved with in one way or another," explains Los Angeles songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sasami Ashworth, aka SASAMI, who wrote the album's ten tautly melodic rock tracks over the course of a year on tour, playing keys and guitar with Cherry Glazerr. "Ok, maybe they're more like over-dramatic drafts of texts that you compose in the Notes section of your iPhone, but either way, they come from a place of getting something off my chest." In an Instagram post announcing the release of ‘Callous’, a haunting ballad chronicling the disintegration of a relationship over wrenching guitar wails, she sums up the inspiration behind her engrossingly confessional debut more bluntly: "Everyone I fucked and who fucked me last year".
Originating as a string of demos she recorded straight to her iPad whilst on tour with Cherry Glazerr, the songs poured out of Ashworth in stream-of-consciousness fashion, tracking the thrills, disappointments, and non-starters of a year spent newly single and on the road. In many ways, though, they were the culmination of decades of hard work. After studying piano as a child, she picked up the French horn in middle school, and has been playing music pretty much every day since - first as a long-time conservatory kid with her sights on a career as a classical French horn player, and later as an elementary school music teacher, running around a classroom, making up songs and dances, and directing rag-tag orchestras full of glockenspiels and bongos. "If you can keep like 30 kids with tambourines entertained, [doing it for] a room full of drunk adults at a rock show is nothing”, she says.
Just like her notoriously irreverent stage banter, Ashworth notes that her relationship to music, and to playing instruments, "comes from a place of love and playfulness and joy" - and it's something you can hear at every moment of SASAMI. But if SASAMI tells a story, it's one about the surprising ways that one's relationships - with lovers, with friends, with oneself - can shift in a single year.
With only a 2-song 7" under her belt before today’s album announcement, SASAMI has already been hailed as "rock's next big thing" by The FADER and awarded Pitchfork's coveted Best New Track distinction.
SASAMI's debut self-titled album is available for pre-order now on limited pressing clear vinyl with an exclusive SASAMI transfer tattoo sheet, CD, and digital download.
Tracklisting
1. I Was A Window
2. Not The Time
3. Morning Comes
4. Free
5. Pacify
6. At Hollywood
7. Jealousy
8. Callous
9. Adult Contemporary
10. Turned Out I Was Everyone
Additionally, SASAMI has announced a 2019 European tour that kicks off next month in Berlin, and a North American tour in the spring. All dates below.
Upcoming live dates
Feb 27th – Badehaus, Berlin Tickets
Feb 28th – Aalhaus, Hamburg Tickets
March 2nd – Bakken, Copenhagen Free entry
March 4th - Botanique Witloofbar, Brussels Tickets
March 5th – Paradiso (Upstairs), Amsterdam Tickets
March 6th – Pop-Up Du Label, Paris Tickets
March 8th – The Lexington, London Tickets
April 3rd – The Echo, Los Angeles
April 9th – Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco
April 11th – Doug Fir, Portland
April 12th – Barboza, Seattle
April 13th – Wise Hall, Vancouver
April 15th – Neurolux, Boise, ID
April 17th – Lost Lake, Denver
April 18th – Reverb, Omaha
April 19th – Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA
April 20th – Amsterdam Bar and Hall, St Paul, MN
April 21st – Colectivo (Back Room), Milwaukee
April 23rd – Schubas, Chicago
April 25th – Baby G, Toronto
April 26th – Quai Des Brumes, Montreal
April 27th – Brighton Music Hall, Boston
April 29th – PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia
April 30th – Elsewhere, Brooklyn
May 3rd – DC9, Washington
May 4th – Club Café, Pittsburgh
May 5th – Rumba Café, Columbus
May 6th – The Basement, Nashville
May 8th – Three Links, Dallas
May 9th – Barracuda, Austin
