SASAMI unveils new single featuring Clairo + instore dates announced for the UK
SASAMI
Shares new single “In Love With A Memory (Feat. Clairo)” – watch video here
Announces UK instores for next month
New album Blood On the Silver Screen out March 7th
Photo Credit L-R: Lucas Creighton & Tanner Deutsch
Early Praise for Blood On the Silver Screen:
"SASAMI hits pop out of the park on her latest single ‘Slugger’” Rolling Stone
“A bold, oversized romantic declaration, with plenty of cymbal-bashing and a new shade of the fearlessness that Sasami Ashworth displayed on her 2022 album Squeeze” Billboard
"Where once she wrote music for sticky-floored rock shows, 'Honeycrash' feels purpose-built for much bigger venues. It's a bold and intriguing reinvention, the kind that makes you sit upright and pay attention" The FADER
“The genre-bending musician fuses ballads, heavy metal and industrial sounds to create music dripping with emotion” Dazed
"Emotionally and sonically daring pop music... 'Honeycrash' cements itself as one of the most fearless feats in her discography thus far" Paste
“Epic, stadium-sized songwriting” Clash
"Between ‘Honeycrash’ and ‘Slugger,’ SASAMI has already built excitement for her upcoming album Blood on the Silver Screen. Now, she has a new single out that demonstrates what the album may be capable of. ‘Just Be Friends’ boasts passionate lyrics that capture the intensity of romance and a poppy melody that is both soft and catchy. There is some innocence to the sound of this song, but the overall product shows Sasami’s maturity as an artist" Consequence
SASAMI releases “In Love With A Memory (Feat. Clairo),” the wistful new single from her forthcoming audacious and epic new album, Blood On the Silver Screen. Co-produced with Rostam, the duet with Clairo takes inspiration from traditional Japanese pop ballads. “Rostam and I both studied composition, so he wanted to bring out more of my classical side,” SASAMI says. The song arrives today with a music video directed by Jay Swuen.
Watch the video for “In Love With A Memory (Feat. Clairo)” here.
Stream “In Love With A Memory (Feat. Clairo)” here.
“‘In Love With A Memory’ was actually the first song I wrote that ended up on Blood On the Silver Screen,” SASAMI explains. “I grew up going to Japanese or Korean ‘noraebang’ private karaoke rooms with my mom, who was secretly the most incredible singer. Most of her go-to numbers were oooold Japanese and Korean folk songs that low key kind of made me feel like I was in a horror film or David Lynch movie. I can picture my mom in a Julee Cruise-type setting- single, jazz lounge spotlight and cigarette smoke hanging stalely in the air- singing one of those old songs with the most gorgeously haunting vibrato and breathtaking vocal control. That’s the feeling I was tapping into when I started writing ‘In Love With A Memory’, and there is a very timeless but relevant crooning feeling imbued in the song that I think was perfectly reflected by the production that Rostam and I orchestrated together. Claire has been a longtime, long distance friend and dream collaborator for me, so it was such a magnificent gift for her to lend her voice to the narrative. I really imagine this track as a cinematic duet with a ghost.”
Due March 7th, Blood On the Silver Screen finds the polymath combining her classical conservatory-trained skills as a player, producer, and composer with her fearless and bombastic stage persona to create her most realized music to date: the all-out SASAMI pop record.
Additionally, SASAMI has also announced a run of UK instores alongside a North American tour, her explosive live show is not to be missed. All dates below.
Tour Dates:
7th March - New York, NY @ Rough Trade *
10th March - London, UK @ Rough Trade East *
12th March - Liverpool, UK @ Rough Trade Liverpool *
13th March - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade Nottingham *
19th April - Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
22nd April - Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge
23rd April - Santa Fe, NM @ Launchpad
25th April - Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum Art Co
26th April - Austin, TX @ Psych Fest
27th April - Houston, TX @ White Oak
29th April - Nashville, TN @ The Blue Room
30th April - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
2nd May - Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
3rd May - Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
5th May - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
8th May - Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
9th May - Montreal, QC @ Le Ritz PDB
10th May - Toronto, ON @ Great Hall
12th May - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
13th May - Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club
15th May - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
17th May - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
18th May - Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club
20th May - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
21st May - Seattle, WA @ Neumos
22nd May - Eugene, OR @ Soreng Theatre
24th May - Napa, CA @ BottleRock
* solo in-store performance
Watch the previously released videos for “Honeycrash”, “Slugger” and “Just Be Friends”
Working with co-producers Jenn Decilveo and Rostam, with SASAMI as sole writer, each Blood On the Silver Screen track viscerally captures a different thread of love, sex, power, and embodiment. “Pop music is like fuel,” Sasami says. “It’s just invigorating.” Eschewing today’s pop zeitgeist, Sasami gravitated towards late aughts and 2010s pop a la Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, plus Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, and Sia. She was influenced by modern country storytelling, mixing vulnerability with humor, and the mood board also included Prince, Japanese city pop, and the stadium-sized, denim-clad iconography of Bruce Springsteen.
Now in her early 30s, Sasami didn’t grow up listening to much pop music, and even felt pressures to avoid it. “I was always a weirdo outsider and I didn’t feel like pop music spoke to me,” she said. “Being a woman of color, I’ve always felt this pressure or need to make something that’s mysterious or innovative, and always shied away from lightheartedness.” But she also sees Blood On the Silver Screen’s embrace of pleasure as a kind of personal reclamation. Raised in Los Angeles in the “conservative religious cult” of the Unification Church, her senses of herself and her sexuality were skewed. “My relationship to love and sex was so tied into these repressive, super restrictive definitions,” she says. The album is an extension of her process of coming into herself as part of a generation unbeholden to conventions around love, sex, or the nuclear family. “This album for me is about having deep, meaningful relationships within a new definition of what is good, what is right, and what is powerful,” she says. “We are still passionate beings.”
“I wanted to go all out with this album,” Sasami continues. “I wanted to, in my tenderness and emotionality, have the bravery to undertake something as epic as making a pop record about love. I hope it makes people feel empowered and embodied, too. It’s important to not box yourself in.”
Blood On the Silver Screen is available to pre-order at the Domino Mart on Blood Red and Standard Black vinyl, CD and digitally. Dom Mart | Digital
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