Ash Koosha

"When I first used SUBPAC I was amazed by how it made me feel the movement of sound physically. SUBPAC has definitely added another dimension to the product of artists who seek more than a sonic product. Now we can experience audio, visuals and physicality of sound."

Ash Koosha, lauded for his mind-bending electronic music” (Pitchfork) and intimate, elegantly fractured, beat-driven music” (The Guardian) has received support by the likes of Run The Jewels, Empress Of and FACT via their LPs of the year for Guud. Koosha has also had to cope with a brief imprisonment for his music and seeking asylum in the UK, where he lives as an exile, unable to return home. He prefers, though, to concentrate on his art and, with I AKA I Koosha’s experimental drive solidifies into remarkable achievement, sitting somewhere between Amon Tobin and Flying Lotus and sharing qualities with the likes of Arca and The Haxan Cloak but sounding like no one but himself.

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Fascinated for many years by his own synaesthesia (the ability to ‘see’ sound), Koosha has tried to systematise this ability by treating sound like a physical matter which can be broken down, liquified, rescaled or spatially positioned.” Working mainly with his own field recordings, treating each sampled source as a physical object, Koosha squeezes, stretches, distorts and moulds units of sound before using a background in classical music—both Persian and Western—gleaned from his time at the Tehran Conservatory of Music to structure and shape the result into affecting, original and often beautiful movements — a process he calls finding geometry in sounds.”

There’s something of the renaissance man about Koosha. In his drive to let us see as he sees, Koosha is creating possibly the world’s first virtual reality album, a post music-video experience” of I AKA I that will be shown in 2016 using Oculus Rift headsets, ahead of their projected mass marketing. In addition, his first feature film, Fermata, which features Colin Firth’s son, Will Firth, is due for release later in the year. Koosha has weighty history here, the film in which he starred, No One Knows About Persian Cats, loosely based on his own experiences in Iranian underground music scene, won the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2009. Ash’s co-star Negar Shaghaghi is also behind the beautiful “I AKA I” artwork.

For me this experience is not one imposed by the composer on the listener,” he says, but only the reflection of the listener’s own emotions. The composer is only holding the mirror. What you see in the mirror is your own fears, angers, sentiments, and the alien yet tangible quality of such emotions.” – Ash Koosha

soundcloud.com/ashkoosha