Salt Ashes Takes on NYC With 'Blurred Culture'

May 23, 2016

Salt Ashes Takes on NYC With ‘Blurred Culture’

Emerging artist Salt Ashes, aka Veiga Sanchez, is gearing up to release her self-titled debut album this summer. She recently released the first single off the album, entitled ‘Save It,’ which has been receiving rave reviews. The songstress recently caught up with Cortney Armitage from Blurred Culture, where they took to the city streets and discussed her new single and debut album. They also spoke about her inspirations and being a woman in the industry. You can check out some of the feature below, but be sure to head over to Blurred Culture to read the full article.

My first impression as she walked into the room – she knows herself. You can’t say that about most young women … but Veiga Sanchez (professionally known as “Salt Ashes“) is different. There’s an aura about her, and she certainly made quite a first impression with me when I met her for an interview.

I immediately knew that I would like her as a person. Her beauty and wit were obvious, but I was particularly surprised with her bubbly disposition. After all, her music is a bit dark …. dark in a good way … in a Depeche Mode kind of way. Just listen to the first single off her debut album, “Save It” . The song is practically a map for finding inner strength in the face of darkness and despair after hitting rock bottom. But upon reflection, there is a sense of hope latched onto the pervasive and optimistic underlying beat; hope that is laying in wait under the dark tones of the music. This underlying optimism, which bubbles to the swell into the bridge, seems to be the essence of Salt Ashes.

There’s probably two sides of me. There is the personal side of me and then there is this dark side in me which comes out a lot, but obviously comes out more in my writing. It is when I’m in my room and kind of locked away from everything and I get into my head and that’s when all that kind of stuff comes out. And I have days where that darkness just comes out, and I have to lock myself away from everybody because I don’t like being that person around people. I like talking to people, and I like meeting new people and learning new things, so maybe I reserve that side of me for the music and have that as the outlet for that.

BC: What’s your favorite song to perform?
It’s probably “Whatever You Want Me To Be”. I’ve only performed it live twice but in those two shows it just felt awesome. It is one of the slower ones on the album, which is maybe the whole novelty of it because my live set is usually pretty up beat the whole way and then when we introduced “Whatever You Want Me To Be” which is a slow number it just felt so good and it was like “this is new and exciting and different” but I connect quite well with that song so I think maybe that’s what it is.

BC: What is it about it that you connect to?
I wrote the song about a documentary I watched about Edie Sedgwick and just about what I thought might be going on in her head and I guess there are probably certain times in my life that I do connect with that feeling like you need to do whatever you have to do to please other people. Luckily most of the time I don’t feel like that, I’m quite strong minded and independent, but everyone has those vulnerable moments and in those moments is when I connect with that song.

BC: Especially for women…
Especially in this industry, I think it’s really difficult for women. Everyone feels like they have to conform all the time and there is kind of this “what people consider to be perfect” and it’s mainly women that get pushed to be that way. But who decides what perfect is? I mean everyone is perfect. I get very angry about this subject matter because I just think, “Whatever it is that someone is telling you need to be, if you’re happy, as long as you’re happy and you’re content within yourself, then that is all that matters.” Like fuck them in the ass.