Ash Koosha - I AKA I (CD) |

Included in “Albums We’re Most Excited for in 2016” (Pitchfork) I AKA I is the first album that Iranian-born, London-based electronic musician Ash Koosha has released on Ninja Tune and it is, by some distance, his best work yet. Koosha, lauded for his “mind-bending electronic music” (Pitchfork) and “intimate, elegantly fractured, beat-driven music” (The Guardian) has been supported by various publications including 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 Haxan Cloak but sounding like no one but himself. The results are nothing less than stunning. I AKA I, Koosha says “is about transformations in psychology and technological advancements - the result is always the same humans in the end.” The twenty two tracks across its forty six minutes feel less like separate entities than part of a bigger structure, but the structure itself is constantly informed by its parts, a kind of jazz aesthetic with none of the sounds or cliches of jazz: “