Post-punk artist ASHRR came at electronic music from a fresh angle.
"When we were making the new album, there were a bunch of songs that we created with a DJ-style approach, where we mixed up different sections of ideas we had and formed them into songs over time," they say. "A good example is 'Please Don’t Stop the Rain.' We started DJing because it’s a skill that all bands need to have today.
We consider it a hybrid approach to making music because, at the end of the day, what matters is putting out great songs, and the method of delivery needs to be more fluid now. We started making mixes for OpenLab, Dublab, and more last year, and we’ve been on a roll ever since. Ethan and I are always producing music daily, but as far as the DJ approach goes, I’d say the last few years have shown a lot of creativity and growth for us as DJs. However, we prefer to call ourselves a band with many 'hybrid' offspring, including DJing."
Describing the sound as "Indie dance, electronic soul, post-punk," ASHRR's latest release is the Sunshine Low album, out September 20 on UK label 2020 Vision.
"We spent two years making it, starting as we were coming out of the pandemic, and we wanted to create music that brings people together on the dance floor—feel-good music that makes you dance but also has depth to the songs," they say. "Over the past few years, we’ve been constantly refining and reworking the songs until we finally believed, 'Okay, we did it!' We’re really excited for the world to hear this album. It’s a journey meant to be listened to from top to bottom."
As for gear: "While making the album, we used the Prophet Rev2, the Moog Matriarch, and a custom Fender Mustang that really became the guitar sound of the album. We also used Arturia gear and a slew of other equipment, but we wanted to create this album as organically as possible. When we DJ, whatever the place has lying around is what we end up using, but I’m fond of my TMA-2 DJ headphones!"
Looking ahead, ASHRR has plenty planned for the coming months.
"The album comes out soon, and we are working on our live band show release dates as well as Ashrr Soundsystem DJ sets," they say. "We completely broke down the entire album and remade it specifically for a club environment, and we’re working on ways to incorporate that into our live hybrid DJ sets. We’re hoping to get over to the UK later this year to start playing live! They want to see us, and we’re trying to sort out the logistics as well as play around the West Coast. We’ve got a special remix with Ron Trent coming later this year too!"
ASHRR perform an album release part on September 12 at Apotheke in Los Angeles.
Photo by Jeff Forney
