Ash Koosha: 'I try to avoid any indication that I’m doing anything political'

The Iranian-born, London-based musician is taking futurism to new levels on his album, I AKA I. He talks with the Guardian about his past at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and his present in exile

Ashkan Kooshanejad is obsessed with the future. In conversation, it seems like he has already been there. The London-based, Tehran-born artist, known as Ash Koosha, talks of a world where iPhones are embedded below our skin, where humans take agency over digital existence, where our devices will be a part of us and we will be a part of them. “This is happening,” he says. “But we kind of ignore it.” Koosha sees a future where a universal basic income will be paid to all, alleviating the economic inequality that rapid technological advances are creating. And music, well, music might not actually exist any more. But it’s nothing to be scared of.

“Technophobia is not relevant any more,” says Koosha, whose second full-length record I AKA I is out now on Ninja Tune, following his 2015 debut, GUUD, on Olde English Spelling Bee. “Because the human that I am, at its core, is also in that digital version of myself. It’s just me. It’s I, also known as, I.” Koosha makes meticulous electronic music, employing what he calls “nano-compositions” made from manipulated field recordings, and channeling an inherent influence of Iranian groove. He is a musician, a multimedia experimenter, a film-maker. But most of all, he is a philosopher, whose art works to find intimacy and humanity in digital culture; meditating on how the technological singularity, the future when we could become outsmarted by machines, will impact our humanness and our capacity for expression. “The future of humanity is generally a subject I live with every day. I think about it, I talk to my friends about it. When I’m doing music, it naturally comes out. It’s a part of my emotions.”

The future of humanity is generally a subject I live with every day. It’s a part of my emotions.

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by Liz Pelly via Electronic music | The Guardian