SASAMI is a musician from Los Angeles. Her latest single, “Honeycrash,” is out now on Domino.
Sasami Ashworth — best known mononymously as SASAMI — is musician from LA; Andrew Thomas Huang is a writer-director and visual artist who’s directed music videos for Björk, FKA Twigs, Kelela, and many more. Sasami and Andrew collaborated on the video for her latest single “Honeycrash,” which was just released last week. To celebrate, the two hopped on a Zoom call for a quick catch up.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Sasami Ashworth: Wait, am I muted?
Andrew Thomas Huang: Now we can hear you!
Sasami: Oh, sorry. I’m at the top of a gigantic pine at the top of a mountain. I get service from a giant cloud with diamond internet receptors, and I think that a dragon was flying by and blocked the reception, so I just cut out for a second.
Andrew: Where do you get your cloud Wi-Fi?
Sasami: There’s a goblin provider. The goblin provider takes fingernail clippings and wishes monthly to provide me with usually pretty spotless service.
Andrew: Fingernail clippings are a pretty good currency among goblin kind.
Sasami: Definitely. Because I feel like in this economy, gut microbiome is extremely important — you know, they talk about the different ways that gut microbiome affects cognition and skin health and all these other things. So I think fingernail clippings, not only do they have collagen, keratin, they naturally probably have some sort of bacterial matter. Human substrate is one of the most valuable things in this economy. AI could never with gut biome, am I right?
Andrew: That’s true. You gotta get good with the the goblin gut biome, specifically.
Sasami: 100%. I’m pretty sure when we die, there’s just a giant goblin in the sky with his two hands out, ready to collect whatever gut biome we have left.
Andrew: Because we can’t have goblin diarrhea.
Sasami: No, absolutely not. That’s no way to spend eternity.
Andrew: [Laughs.]
Sasami: How is your spiritual gut biome these days?
Andrew: Oh, my spiritual gut biome? I guess in terms of cultural input, I recently watched Pitch Black with Vin Diesel from 2000—
Sasami: Oh, my god.
Andrew: So my spiritual gut biome has been Vin Diesel.
Sasami: Wait, say more.
Andrew: I’m just really taken by his charisma in his early career. Also, the film itself is both really bad, but good. Like really bad-good.
Sasami: I’m assuming it’s an action film, right?
Andrew: Yeah, it’s an action film. Vin Diesel lands on a planet filled with aliens that are afraid of light. But then, of course, the planet enters a total eclipse, so him and his crew are plunged in the dark and they have to survive this planet full of flesh-eating vampire monsters. I’ve also been thinking a lot about vampires because I’m working on something with vampires — so I’ve been thinking about vampires, Vin Diesel, and aliens. [Laughs.]
Sasami: Fair enough.
Andrew: What about you? How is your spiritual gut biome at the moment?
Sasami: Well, I’m preparing for tour, so I’m kind of getting in my own personal Vin Diesel mode. Every morning, I wake up and I pluck the heaviest toadstools that I can find, and I do four sets of 20 reps of toadstools in each hand. Then I find the largest boulder that I can, and I strap it to my back, and I climb up to the top of the mountain to get to the Fountain of Youth. I collect some spiritual water, I put it in my little leather satchel, and then I put the boulder back on my back and I climb down the mountain. You know, just normal fitness behavior.
Andrew: You’re getting jacked. No wonder you’re in Vin Diesel mode. Toadstool ‘roid-ing.
Sasami: Yes, big time. I’m heavy on the adaptogens.
Andrew: Fungal fitness. Sounds fierce.
Sasami: Definitely. Do you have any plans to be outside while you’re in Northern California? Last time we hung out up there, we had a really good wildflower hike.
Andrew: What did we see? We saw tons of tadpoles.
Sasami: Oh, my gosh, the tadpoles were amazing.
Andrew: Yeah, they were amazing. And also kind of gross, but really cool. I forgot what we saw plant-wise.
Sasami: We saw… what was that one? It was like, “Devil’s Paintbrush.”
Andrew: Oh, yeah, Devil’s Paintbrush. That sounds right.
Sasami: I was like, OK, yeah. Go off, Devil’s Paintbrush.
Andrew: Yeah. Currently, my partner has an orange tree in the backyard, so I’ve been just marveling at the orange blossoms.
Sasami: Oh, my gosh, that probably smells so good.
Andrew: Yeah, it smells really good. How about you? Have you had any hot naturalist encounters lately?
Sasami: I mean, I jumped on a giant bay laurel leaf that was about four times the size of my body and rode the west wind to an adjoining mountaintop to hang out with my frog friend. Then I jumped on my frog friend’s back, and we did a little adventure to a pond, and I ate this special weed that gave me gills a la Harry Potter. And then we dove under to this amphibian underwater paradise, and there was a rave at the bottom…
Andrew: That sounds pretty wild.
Sasami: Definitely. Slimy, though, so you gotta be prepared.
Andrew: You’ve seen salamander mating balls, right?
Sasami: Wait, what? I’m googling immediately.
Andrew: Just type in “salamander mating balls,” you’ll see. They really know how to party.
Sasami: Oh, yes. When you said “ball,” I was picturing more of a ball with, like, fox trotting and stuff.
Andrew: They have those too.
Sasami: I love a tangle of newts. I live for a tangle of newts.
Andrew: That’s beautiful.
Sasami: Should we talk about the music video that we made for a second?
Andrew: Uh-huh. How was it for you?
Sasami: It was good. I think that any time you make some art, it’s strange when you’re sitting on it for a long time. It’s weird to unleash anything new into the world. But I think because we created something that’s very emotional, it’s been nice to get a lot of responses from people that they’re having an emotional relationship with the song and with the video. Because — I mean, my background is in classical music and I wasn’t born with, like, pop star diva energy, so it always makes me really uncomfortable when people are like, “mother, slay,” about me. It always makes me feel better when people’s comments are about the art that I made, the song or the video.
Andrew: You tore it, though.
Sasami: I did, but that was all in service to the spirit of the video. So I feel happy that people are having an emotional reaction to it. I don’t know, I have my own feelings about attention economy and beauty standards and blah, blah, blah… But obviously, I looked hot.
Andrew: You looked fucking hot. You really served a killer look. And I think that you delivered a world through not just the sound, but also your presence and your performance. It’s an incredibly emotional song. The first time I heard it, I was pretty thunderstruck. It’s so anthemic, and it really inspires that kind of sweeping drama that I felt like we had to capture in the video.
Sasami: Totally. And I feel like the elements have kind of always been a foundation for your and my relationship, as friends and collaborators. I mean, when we first met, we hung out on the rocks by the ocean, and we are always going out on hikes and having relationships around plants and fungus and stuff like that. So it was special to make this piece of art that very much is like — you know, we used a giant, super state-of-the-art LED stage to make the video, but there still is this very elemental coalescence with nature that’s at the heart of the video. So I feel like that’s really special to have made something with you that is at the crossroads of this peak technology and also just the fundamental emotionality of human interaction with nature.
Andrew: Yeah, I think you’re right.
Sasami: It’s so us.
Andrew: Yeah, it is. Not only is there the nature element that I think ties us and the work together, but also I do think there’s this mythology of children of Asian immigrants kind of — I don’t want to use the word “stranded,” but lost or swept away in the American West.
Sasami: 100%.
Andrew: There’s that mythological context to it as well.
Sasami: Definitely. I mean, our mood boards always have, like, hot goth Asian people with guitars. I feel like we hit that that emotional and aesthetic point on the video — me with giant, broad shouldered denim jacket with my tongue out playing an electric guitar with lightning behind me. Like, that sentence rules, and then we actually made it.
Andrew: Totally. I’ve been thinking about the word “post-goth,” because it is goth, but at the same time — I just generally feel like if you’re someone that didn’t go through a certain healthy goth phase in your teenage years there’s something wrong with you. [Laughs.] And I feel like while this does have, of course, that element to it, it almost feels like the storm has passed and there’s hope. There’s something much more inviting and romantic about this than Squeeze. I feel like this is a transitionary kind of song. Am I right?
Sasami: Definitely. And also, I honestly think about goth phases a lot. Because now we live in this world where style trends cycle really quickly, and goth or metal or outcast aesthetics can be co-opted by people who don’t really have that feeling of outsiderness — which was so fundamental to being a goth kid or being a punk weirdo. So I feel like it is kind of a pivotal moment for me to be switching into this more pop sound — because, again, I didn’t grow up being a popular kid who thought I was hot and was like, “I’m going to be a pop star someday,” at all. I was the fucking weirdo French horn player with smudged black eyeliner that was somehow a band nerd and a goth kid at the same time. I feel such an affinity to this dark outsider weirdo culture. It’s interesting, because I do find a lot of the SASAMI performance to be a performance, but there is this kind of reclamation of, OK, I’m doing this dark punk kid performance, but also, I actually was a fucking weirdo. I’m not just using the costume — do you know what I’m saying?
Andrew: Yeah, I do know what you’re saying. I like the word “reclamatory,” but also, I think there is kind of this queer latency, in a way. For all of us who didn’t fit into these boxes and are now at this stage in our life, there’s this opportunity to glow up, but to do it while also embracing all the things that did make you specifically who you were.
Sasami: Totally. Do you feel like an outsider still?
Andrew: [Laughs.] You know what? More than ever, sometimes. Especially when I consider what’s happening to entertainment at large. Well, let me rephrase that — I don’t feel like an outsider in that I’ve met so many amazing friends and family, like you — people that don’t make me feel alone at all, people that make me feel very seen. So I’ve spent my adulthood trying to align myself with this kind of spiritual family, I call it. But when I consider the industry at large, I definitely think high school politics continue to pervade our economic and political spheres. Do you feel that way?
Sasami: Oh, yeah. I wake up every morning with Carrie energy. I’m like, Who’s getting the fucking spiritual pigs’ blood on them today?
Andrew: [Laughs.] Who got the spiritual pigs’ blood today?!
Sasami: Oh, REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED. I will not be saying this publicly — I am a successful public figure because I keep my Carrie-pigs’-blood energy to my cauldron work and my curses.
Andrew: [Laughs.] Fair enough.
Sasami: [Laughs.] But I think it is hard because obviously, the way that capitalism works, there’s an element of needing to reach a certain audience and a certain level so that we can get our resources to make the art that we want and pay for all of the adaptogens and stuff like that. But there is this element where it’s a blessing and a curse to have this outsider feeling — because I think the blessing, again, is that we don’t lose ourselves. It’s impossible to lose ourselves because we just never are going to be the hot, blonde, popular kid, ever. I think that’s what makes us really deep and special. And it’s a curse because we just are like, “Give us our fucking money!” Every day is fighting those warring demons. When I was growing up, I always wanted the Abercrombie skirt and the UGG boots or whatever, and I always had the Payless knockoff version. And then I also was really weird and wore, like, Hawaiian t-shirts and flame embroidered jeans, but that’s a whole other topic.
Andrew: Bring it back.
Sasami: But, you know, there’s that part of you that really wants to be accepted so that you can just relax a little bit and not feel like you’re constantly climbing up the mountain with the boulder on your back. That’s why finding someone like you is really special, because there is power in numbers. There’s the militia of post-goth weirdos, and we’re fighting together now so it feels a little bit less lonely. But I definitely still feel a war in my tummy every day.
Andrew: Yeah. I think that the people who do have a war in their tummy — I find that those who are the most angry and depressed friends in my life are actually the most romantic and the most compassionate. Because the reason why they’re angry and depressed is because they live in a world that has let them down, or a world that is just unjust. So I just kind of want my friends to stay mad, because I’m still mad. [Laughs.] I think there’s a lot to be angry about. And I think that anger can be a creative fire.
Sasami: Definitely. Well, I hope that we can have a summit of angry, fire-bellied post-goth outsiders. But maybe on a nice warm beach somewhere, where we have a vacation to talk about our Carrie pigs’ blood exploits for the future. I feel like we deserve that.
Andrew: A hexing holiday. [Laughs.]
Sasami: Thank you so much for talking with me, Andy.
Andrew: Thank you. Thank you for being the most incredible collaborator and inspiring musician and human. It’s always such an honor to make stuff with you, so I’m really proud of what we made together.
Sasami: Me too. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon!
