Ashnikko: the alt-pop powerhouse’s debut is full of lore and righteous rage

21 August, 2023

Ashnikko (2023) Eva Pentel

“Our bodies are not political chess pieces,” Ashnikko yells to the crowd sheltering from the sun under Coachella’s Gobi stage tent. “LGBTQ+ people deserve safe space, healthcare and happy endings,” she adds, their neon blue hair creating a halo around their face as a dystopian, alien backdrop shadows their frame. “Without further ado… let’s rage.”

Much like the lyrics in their growling and sonically sinister opener, ‘You Make Me Sick!’, their performance at the desert festival is beautiful, mad and a little sick. It comes complete with a choreographed fight scene, towering otherworldly plants decorating the stage, and dancers in elaborate Mad Max-meets-fairy costumes which Ashnikko conceptualised with their creative director.

Militarie Gun (2023) — Ashnikko on The Cover of NME. Credit: Eva Pentel for NME

“I want the live element of my music to feel like theatre,” the singer – who uses she/they pronouns – tells us a month after the performance, their voice raspy as they call from Los Angeles. “I want drama and for it to be performance art, not just a gig with me and a DJ but a whole experience.”

If you’re looking for evidence of Ashnikko’s ability to build a whole experience, look no further than their debut album ‘Weedkiller’. It’s equally gritty and gorgeous, with precise production mirroring a wide spectrum of sound, from hip-hop to pop and industrial rock, all layered with lyrics that convey that same emotional breadth. From start to finish, it’s a juggernaut of a debut, as staggering and mesmerising as the theatrical BRITs red carpet walk where NME first met the star.

In the leadup to their first full-length, she’d been writing “loads of music”, but nothing quite clicked until she decided to tap into another form of creativity. “I’m always writing little short stories and I wrote one about a race of AI robots who destroy a fae forest,” she says. The story became the song ‘Weedkiller’ which became the driving concept of the entire album. “You just need that one idea to feed the whole beast,” she says.

Ashnikko (2023) Eva Pentel — Credit: Eva Pentel for NME

That one idea is not only the title track but the climax of the story. In it, Ashnikko plays out a fight taking place in a dystopian wasteland, showing off their vocal dexterity as they shriek at one point and sweetly sing, “I always knew it would come to this / That I would be the one to eliminate you” at another, on top of a beat made of stuttering percussion and echoing gunshots. She describes the sonic journey in the song as one of their most visual to date.

The rest of the album’s vignettes follow a similar trajectory, shaping the story of a fae protagonist hellbent on regaining their power. “I really love telling multiple stories in one song,” she says, before acknowledging the deeper connection to nature they explored during the pandemic. “There’s the overarching environmental element in the story about grieving the loss of wild parts of our planet, natural habitats and biodiversity.”

While some of ‘Weedkiller’’s narrative leans into pure revenge reverie with a hyperpop slant, at other times it’s a memoir read through a sci-fi filter, all told by one of the few emerging pop acts skilled at creating high-conceptual art and tapping into modern anxieties as part of their storytelling. “There’s also the story of body autonomy and unpacking things I learned growing up in small-town America in the Bible Belt,” Ashnikko adds. “It’s about reclaiming my power. It’s a catharsis, just letting my rage explode out of me.”

The now 27-year-old artist Ashton Casey grew up in North Carolina. Though she was unable to relate to the people around there, she found solace and resonance in video games like Zelda, fantasy novels and the music of Björk and Missy Elliott. “As soon as I had the freedom to explore other sides of myself, it exploded out of me like a dam breaking,” she says. “When I turned 18, I moved out on my own and into a new phase of my life in all senses of the word, to new relationships, new friendships and a completely new environment.”

That move from childhood to adulthood impacted their creative trajectory. “Being put in a new environment made me reflect on where I’d come from, find the flaws in it and also feel angry and upset about how I’d been taught to carry myself and move through the world.”

That knack for world-building, comfortability with righteous anger, and propensity for stories about “anti-heroes” not only shaped their worldview but their idiosyncratic approach to music-making as well. Here, Ashnikko creates musical universes where inner turmoil pours out over saccharine beats, larger-than-life characters are crafted in songs and on stage, and no lyrics are off limits.

“‘Weedkiller’ is about reclaiming my power… and letting my rage explode out of me”

In the autumn of 2019, just three weeks after it was uploaded online, Ashnikko’s ‘Stupid’ – which features Baby Tate and provocative lines about PornHub, pussy power and “going ghost for no damn reason” over trap, hip-hop and pop production – became the No. 2 song on TikTok that month with over 1.3 million users sampling the audio for their videos. The virality endured when she released the 2021 mixtape ‘Demidevil’, introducing even more evidence of their chaotic, playful and subversive songwriting, like in the spiralling, bratty-rap track ‘Daisy’, where she writes from the point of view of a dominatrix vigilante who “rids the world of rapists and throat punches the patriarchy”. There’s also the sexy and sharp ‘Slumber Party’, which features Princess Nokia and lyrics about mischievously stealing someone else’s girlfriend.

Since those early hits, however, Ashnikko’s approach to creativity has changed. “With ‘Weedkiller’ it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to make my whole life as far as the visual aspect and the music,” she says. “I’ve been turning to alternative sources of inspiration like patterns in nature and sacred geometry and I’ve been reading a lot of witch’s almanack and old fantasy illustrations. I’ve been putting blinders on and not listening to what my peers are making and just trying to make music from a very authentic and organic place.”

Authenticity has been a marker throughout their career, from the openness by which they shared their pansexual and genderfluid identity with fans in 2021, the Instagram tributes they post to their “love” English singer-songwriter Arlo Parks, or the decision to take on the Ashnikko alias, which she said was “vital to my processing of things, like being assaulted.” For them, it was the healthier option, or as they put it: “Instead of actually going to his house and slitting his throat, I’ll say it in a song.”

She describes herself as “a huge workaholic” and notes that it “affects every aspect of my life and makes me incredibly mentally ill,” so she aims to find separation between Ashnikko and Ashton. “Having a stage persona that is different from you is protective, because when people attack Ashnikko I try not to take it personally. It’s not who I am deep within myself.”

Though an open dialogue with listeners and internet fame were prevalent at the launch of their career, being “super active online” has dwindled at this stage, thanks to that desire to protect herself. “I find it more and more tiresome and frustrating,” she says. “I feel like my concerts are a safe space for people and that’s the goal really. But I don’t interact loads online just for self-preservation.”

That quest for self-preservation takes on different forms in ‘Weedkiller’, like in the nihilistic and buoyant pop track ‘Worms’, as she sings about changing their name and bleaching their eyebrows over bright beats and catchy hooks. In ‘Possession Of A Weapon’ she reflects on the overturning of Roe V. Wade (the 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ended the right to abortion that had been a constitutional right for decades) singing, “I can be grotesque, move my body like chess” as a nod to the body being a pawn in a political game.

“Having a stage persona that is different from you is protective”

On ‘Cheerleader’, Ashnikko hits even closer to home, drudging up memories of their time growing up as a gymnast in the acrobatic sport and the societal sacrifices often made on the “quest for eternal youth, fuckability and eligibility”. The track interpolates the opening chant from the 2000 cheerleading movie Bring It On, as Ashnikko spouts “God made me pretty but you made me mean”, before asking “Who do I have to kill to make everybody love me?” and “Am I fuckable enough for you?” over a spiralling dance beat.

By the time the album closes with ‘Dying Star’, which features Southern singer-songwriter Ethel Cain, that desire to grapple with external forces subsides. “It was quite magical making that with her,” she says of the collaboration. ‘Dying Star’ adds a glimmer of optimism to the tumultuous narrative arc of ‘Weedkiller’, giving the world Ashnikko has built the happy ending she alluded to from the Coachella stage.

“My lead character has been beaten and broken down but has also done horrible things and is incredibly violent on this path towards vengeance,” she says. “As they move through the story, and the record evolves, I wanted to end the record with a dying star and the last line, “I want something soft”. The lush orchestration, slow strumming guitars and Cain’s ethereal vocals, help to imbue that sense of final surrender. “That song is about coming back to a place of hope and realising that all you want is your home back and you want kindness and softness,” she says. “I think that fighting isn’t worth it.”

Ashnikko’s ‘Weedkiller’ is out August 25 on Parlophone

Listen to Ashnikko’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music