Take a large scoop of heavy metal, a teaspoon of electronic demon sounds, a dash of indie rock and folk music, blend it all together on the floor in a cabin in the woods, and you get the sophomore album, Squeeze (2022), released by Sasami Ashworth better known as, SASAMI . Oh wait, I forgot the most important ingredient, a heaping bucket of rage!
One might imagine an album inspired by nature and immediately hear a soft angelic voice over finger-picked acoustic guitar. This is not quite what Sasami envisioned. In her 2022 album Squeeze, she takes complexities found both in human nature, and in the natural world whether being struggles in relationships, or feelings such as desperation, rage, frustration, anger and captures them with a high resolution lens. Her goal was to dig into darker emotions and feelings, and stray as far from the toxic positivity culture that was taking place during the height of quarantine.
Everytime I listen to the album I hear something new, which says a lot given that I probably devote the same amount of time to this album as one would to a part time job. Much of this album’s genre-bending nature is thanks to SASAMI’s eclectic musical background. She studied music academically in high school, went on to pursue classical French Horn at Eastman School of Music, and was a member of the indie-rock band, Cherry Glazer all while simultaneously working on her solo Indie-Rock album, SASAMI (2019). In addition to her own extensive musical toolbox, SASAMI collaborated with a diverse array of musical artists. Much of the sound on Squeeze can be attributed to Sasamis’ last minute decision to go see the death metal band, Barishi at a dive bar the night before leaving for her songwriters retreat. After being figuratively and literally moved by Barishi, Sasami just knew her album had to have heavy metal elements. Not only that, but Barishi would go on to be the backing band for both the record, as well as for her live performances.
The first sound of the first track, “Skin A Rat” is an eerily distorted child’s voice singing, “There are many ways to skin a rat, there are many ways to skin a rat” abruptly followed by the sound of crashing drums and heavy metal guitar in full blast. In various interviews, Sasami has spoken about how heavy metal as a genre has felt very out of reach for her. There is a huge lack of Asian American representation in the cis, white, and male-dominated genre. In an interview with the YouTube channel, Consequence, Sasami spoke about how in pop culture, folklore and heavy rock music, “women are oftentimes objectified or are made to be a victim or disempowered in the narrative.” As an alternative, she wanted to create an exaggerated narrative where “femme creatures are the opposite of victims and are almost the perpetrators of violence.” General themes of frustration, dread, and violence, whether stemming from oppression by systems of injustice, in relationships, or just existing as a human on this earth are pungent in Squeeze. Her message no doubt comes across when she screams, “Hell-fucked economy!! Crisis identity!!” in “Skin A Rat”. Similarly, in her cover of Daniel Johnson’s “Sorry Entertainer ”, she includes her uncontrollable coughing at the final moments of the song (after scream-singing for the entire song), a cherry on top of the emotional sundae.
SASAMI performing live in NY, captured by Sofia Steinhart
In the same interview with the channel, Consequence, Sasami mentions how she’s drawn to the extremes in terms of dynamic range due to her background in classical music, as well as in film-scoring. Some of the moments where there is a sudden increase in volume can be truly shocking, and felt very physically in the body. The creative use of dynamic range is another way she is able to convey the complex range of human emotion and the ways of nature. Half-way through the track “Make It Right” there is a huge build up in the volume of the guitar distortion, before returning back to the normal volume of the song after only a few seconds. This part of the song is truly suffocating – in the best way possible.
The third track on the album, “Say It”, is strikingly different from the aforementioned tracks. It contains electronic percussion and octave altering monster-like vocal effects. In the interview with Consequence, Sasami said, “I wanted to make an album that felt like a haunted house, or a corn maze, where every room is like a different scene.” The positioning of “Say It” in the album feels like walking into a terrifying room in a haunted house. This song mostly consists of Sasami tauntingly and repeatedly saying the phrase, “Say it, say it”. “Need It To Work” shares similar qualities as she repeats “Like me, like me, do you like me, do you like me, do you notice me do you notice me, do you notice me, do you notice me”. “Squeeze” – the title track – also falls under this category. She discussed this specific track in an interview with The Line of Best Fit. Sasami commented on how the album, while made for everyone, was specifically made for femme, non-binary, queer, people of color. When talking about her collaboration with the artist No Home, she said “No Home is a black woman from the UK, so it was really an honor for me to have her write the verses on “‘Squeeze,’” Sasami said. “The song is about how violence creeps into the mundanity of femme people’s lives. I think she’s really heavy and deep and political in her music. I thought that it would be an honor to have her life perspective and her musical perspective on the song. She’s the real fucking deal.”
The final track and a personal favorite of mine, “Not A Love Song,” ends Squeeze surprisingly on a more peaceful note. It addresses the ways that humans oftentimes try to capture everything, including nature into something “human-like,” such as in a love song or a photograph. SASAMI, after expressing the violence and aggression and pain that can be found in both humans and in nature, finally lands on a song that captures the breathtaking beauty of the natural world. She sings about the beauty in nature, and how it’d be doing it an injustice to equate it to anything other than what it is. The sounds in nature cannot be directly made into a “love song” because it is its own separated “beautiful, beautiful, sound,” isolated from human consumption and modification.