{"id":402,"date":"2019-03-03T12:17:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T11:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/?p=402"},"modified":"2022-06-07T22:52:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T21:52:37","slug":"sasami-voldoet-eindelijk-aan-haar-eigen-standaarden-ik-ben-een-alles-of-niets-persoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/en\/2019\/03\/03\/sasami-voldoet-eindelijk-aan-haar-eigen-standaarden-ik-ben-een-alles-of-niets-persoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Sasami finally lives up to her own standards: \"I'm an all-or-nothing person\""},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, Sasami Ashworth operated in the shadow of others. She has made soundtracks for films and commercials, worked as a music teacher at a Los Angeles school and co-wrote albums by Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing and Hand Habits. Two years ago, she was on tour with Cherry Glazerr as a band member when she embarked on the solo debut that now leaves her on her own two feet.<\/strong><\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by:\u00a0<\/strong>Dirk Baart
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been nearly ten years since Sasami Ashworth graduated from the Eastman School of Music, a conservatory in Rochester, New York. She hasn\u2019t exactly received an unemployment insurance form along with her diploma, but realizes that the high paying jobs for musicians are simply not up for grabs. In the years that follow, Ashworth gathers all kinds of odd jobs to make ends meet. Not reluctantly, though: Ashworth actually allows herself to look at the composition process from just about all sides. She is involved in films such as My Good Man's Gone, Holy Hell<\/em> and Light Therapy,<\/em> where she effortlessly uses her music in the service of images. As an instrumentalist and arranger, she contributes to albums by musician friends. And when those bands go on tour, Sasami goes with them. At least, if she doesn't have to teach music in LA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, Ashworth is on tour with Cherry Glazerr, the California garage rock band she joined as an official member a year earlier. During seemingly endless days on a bus on seemingly endless highways, she begins to write songs. Just out of boredom, mostly. \u201cLife on the road naturally has something romantic on the one hand,\u201d she says, on tour in Germany. The telephone connection makes her voice even more shrill than it already is. \u201cBut it can also be very boring and monotonous. Actually, there are two ways to make it fun: partying and fucking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SASAMI<\/em>, the debut album that ultimately emerged from Ashworth's writing sessions in the backseat, is especially about the latter \u2013 and the lack of it. On 'Not The Time' she sings about the relationship that ended just before she left on the tour in question: 'This is not the time or place for us, even though we tried to make it work.' <\/em>The separation turns out to be exactly what Ashworth needs. Not only does she finally dare to put herself first, she also has more than enough to write about. \u201cThat was good, because normally I'm not that good with words,\u201d she explains. \u201cFortunately, just before I started working on the album, I suddenly fell under the spell of poetry, of poems by Leonard Cohen for example.\u201d As she collects her tunes on an iPad on the tour bus, she fills page after page in her notebook with phrases. On both 'Morning Comes' and 'Jealousy' the sun creeps in from the other side of the window through her eyelids: 'They say if you stare directly into the sunlight it can cause blindness \/ but if you shut your eyes and let it in \/ unrelenting heat, it seeps through your lids and soaks so deep \/ allow yourself to be flooded by the warmth.'<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashworth specializes in stream of consciousness writing on SASAMI<\/em>. In several songs she repeats the same word over and over, as if she couldn't figure out what sentence should be next and eventually decided that one sentence would do. \u201cThey became mantras, poetic formulas. It also felt a bit like I was writing a blues song, when of course I don't use any blues chords at all. In that kind of music you often hear how a certain phrase can change meaning if there are other chords underneath it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n