Ashnikko for Glamcult #143, the DEEPREAL issue

Ashnikko is a chaos queen and a certified maneater. The blue-haired bard of bad behaviour clawed her way from SoundCloud obscurity to global pop star antihero status with her unholy mix of electro, rap, and industrial noise. She’s a hoarder of her own mythology: past egos, heartbreaks, and physical relics — from baby teeth to condoms — all feeding the patchwork of her ever-evolving identity. Across her shifting musical incarnations, Ashnikko remains a big sister figure to her younger self, stepping into enlargements of her many inner worlds with each new project.

Uncompromisingly weird (in the best way possible), she refuses to separate the sacred from the disgusting. She’ll boast that her bush feels like mink on Lip Smacker (and we believe her), suck her girlfriend’s spit through a straw on She’s So Pretty and eat a pickle off her 9-inch heel on Instagram. Ashnikko embodies the whole spectrum of sex and grossness, heartbreak and infatuation, mess and empowerment — insisting that being too much is exactly enough.

Her work queers binaries and torches the male gaze, crafting a world where bodies are unruly and desire refuses to perform for anyone but itself. She knows her music is divisive, but instead of taming herself, she pushes forward, even with prowlers circling overhead. Now, she’s back with Smoochies, an album that is sticky, shameless, and mildly deranged. It’s peak Ashnikko: feral, flirtatious, and eternally transfiguring.

Great to speak to you! With Smoochies about to see the light of day, how are you feeling?
I feel a great sense of relief. I feel quite free putting out this album in a way that I haven’t with past albums. I had way more fun writing it than I did the others. So it’s different in that way. Refreshing.

What’s changed in the process of writing this album that made it more fun?
I realised that it’s so tiring, actually, to torture myself and put so much pressure on myself every time I release music. At the end of the day, music is a very fun pursuit, and it’s so magical. Also, it’s a community activity, which is so fun.

I found an interview you did with Glamcult from about five years ago, where you said that a lot of writing music for you comes from “a sad and insecure place.” It’s nice to hear that this doesn’t apply anymore.
I was a really depressed little fuck five years ago. So I’m sure I would have said that. 

Sounds like her.
Yeah, sounds like her. I think a lot of music-making for me is mythologising myself, so that I have these characters I can step into and embody. It’s like an archetype that I would like to become, a letter to myself, an ease with which I would like to move through the world. On a good day, I do move like that, but I’m not as consistent as my music. Still, it comes from a much more secure place now.

Do you feel like the distance between yourself and your mythological self gets smaller as time passes?
In the past, there was a pretty big difference. I created my stage persona almost as an older sister character who was telling me what I deserved in situations where I wasn’t receiving the treatment that I was demanding. Through my music, I’ve learned a lot about myself, the space that I take up, and how I deserve to be loved.

And became an older sister figure to your fans, too. Is there a big disparity between your stage persona and how you are in daily life?
I feel like artists who are their stage persona in real life are probably quite tiring and tired. I feel like you can’t be like that all the time. God, I wouldn’t want to be that all the time. Living in a world that rearranges itself around you all the time is unsustainable and really bad for your brain, so no. 

Every album feels like a new era of Ashnikko, where a new character of yours emerges. How do you change within those stories?
I feel like sometimes I get really overwhelmed by the amount of characters that I can be just personally in my own life. The interests and the hobbies I could take up, the genres that I could make, and the way I dress. There are just limitless possibilities of how one could change their avatar. I think the best way for me to deal with that limitlessness is to change character with each album because I feel I’m always going through new phases. I feel like I’m having like my eighth puberty.

Is there ever a tension between staying true to who you are outside of the artistic world you create and the persona you step into?
For Smoochies, for instance, I’m a lover girl, a messy girl, a chaos queen. Very sensual and irreverent, and also self-aware. I am that person in real life, so I think there isn’t a huge discrepancy. The music is very genuine to who I am.

A lot of your work notoriously shatters the male gaze. How has your experience of *being perceived* been like?
It’s inescapable, as a femme person in the public eye, to feel the vice-like grip of needing to be young, fuckable, and palatable. That’s a currency that we’re forced to trade in. I think that a lot of the work I’ve been doing with my music has been to shed some of that. To realise that we’ve been sold a lie. My body and my music and my art and my sensuality are not for pure consumption. It’s a damn shame when I’m wearing my little ‘fuck me’ outfit, which feels so powerful when I put it on, and someone comments, “Who’s making her show her ass like this?” As if I don’t have autonomy and ownership over my own body. As if I can’t be a feral, carnal, sexual creature, who takes great pride and pleasure in that side of myself. I think it’s really important that in my music it comes across that you can be sensual, beautiful, and vulgar, and gross, and mean, all at the same time. You can exist over a whole spectrum, especially as a woman or as a femme person. 

Yes! It’s been so interesting to follow the whole online discourse of decentering men. Especially the idea that by going against the male gaze, you’re still centring it — so, you’re either submitting to it or rebelling against it.
That’s a very depressing way to look at it, ha-ha. I think maybe I’d like to move my practice into less rebellion and just pure apathy and ambivalence. Purely living for self and community. True, true, true decentering, I think, is just indifference. And really, being able to be your authentic self without performance. 

I guess it’s part of the journey, too. I feel like you often have to have a rebellious stage until you can get to the indifference.
Yeah, and I think that a lot of my music has been rebellious as a direct reaction to how I grew up. I grew up in the Bible Belt and a very patriarchal family system. I was raised with a very distinct lack of information on what I deserved in this world. So yeah, a lot of that has been an active effort on my part to heal generational trauma, which could be read as rebellious.

Beyond the public influence, how has your artistry affected your personal family system? Would you say your relatives have confronted those patriarchal values through your art?
One of my proudest moments was my mum coming up to me and saying, “You’ve really helped me learn that I can have a more joyful, autonomous life where I can follow my passions and be loved for who I am as a whole human being, not just an object.” That means a lot.

That’s really beautiful.
I mean, she raised me, so it was partly her, too. And she’s such a creative person, so I wouldn’t be who I am today without my mum. I think it’s beautiful that I can take those gifts that she gave me and then teach her something later in my life as well.

It’s a very special cycle of raising each other. Looking back on your childhood, when would you say you started experimenting with how you express yourself?
When I was 13, my dad moved us to Estonia, and I remember Googling “What do 13-year-olds wear in Estonian school?” I have such a visceral memory of trying to figure out what teenagers wore in Estonia and being really stressed out that I would look super out of place. I soon realised the harsh reality that I was always going to stick out like a sore thumb because I was the only American there. Regardless of what I did, I wasn’t going to fit in. That was a very pivotal moment for me. I was getting bullied pretty intensely, so I just leaned in really hard. I started going to thrift stores — and they are incredible in the Baltics, btw. This was my first little foray into styling myself. I was actively trying to be a little freak in middle school, being like, “Oh, if you guys are going to bully me, I’m going to give you something to bully big time.” I was treating school like my runway, for real. I was mixing patterns like crazy, which is kind of what I do now. And I was rocking up to school wearing the weirdest shit ever, getting absolutely roasted, but I was having a good time. I felt like I was showing up in avant-garde fashion, and that they just really didn’t understand. 

They didn’t deserve the show. We need to see some of those outfits!
I need to find those pictures somehow. I’m dressing for her now — I’m putting on clothes that make me feel good and mischievous. Mischief is a big part of me putting together outfits. I love an outfit that makes me feel like I have a little secret.

I can see that. I feel like it’s almost the same attitude that you carry with you now — that relinquishing of the need to fit in or soften. If your haters are hating, you might as well go have full fun with it.
I know that my music is quite divisive. I feel like when people hate my music, they really, they really hate it. It used to really hurt my feelings. But now I don’t take advice or critique from anyone whose life I wouldn’t want to live. Most of the people who are actively cruel about my music online, I really wouldn’t want to live their lives. And, how fun is it to be divisive? It makes me feel mischievous.

Says way more about them than about you. Would you say sonically your style has changed a lot?
Yes and no. I feel like I’m still true to the same spirit that I started making music with. Especially with this album, it was like going back to the same full-body feeling that I had when I first found my musical identity, maybe at 22 or 23. It was music to honour my younger self, who needed an icon, an older sister-like figure. I needed a legend, a mythological code to live by. I think with Smoochies, I’m going back to that.

But having grown so much.
That’s the most beautiful thing about music for me. It’s like a scrapbook of your life. You can attach different memories and time periods to different albums and songs. The honour of making music is also to be able to do that for other people. 

It’s like a tapestry of what you can be. I guess with each project, you choose a part of yourself to enlarge.
That’s a really good way of looking at it. All these things exist within the same person. We’re just putting them under the microscope.

Are there any territories of yourself that you feel like you haven’t explored yet?
I feel like those things unveil themselves with time. I never really know what the next album is going to be until I change. I think that my last album being quite dark and fantastical, this album existing in a more absurd, colourful world is a direct reaction. The last album was great for what it was, but it was not sustainable for a whole career. It needed to be a bigger conversation, a richer tapestry. I love that I’ve had the freedom to explore so many genres of my music, and my fan base has been so receptive to that. I love playing, and I’ve been afforded a very free-flowing career.

It’s really special not to feel pigeon-holed. How does this idea of playing relate to your presence online? Algorithms have such an insane pull over what we’re attracted to and how we show, and I’m curious if you’ve ever felt an effect of that on your artistry?
Yeah, my bestie and I were just talking about how the algorithm is like this god that we have to pay respect to and fuse ourselves around and adjust and change shape. Going into a new album campaign, being in board rooms, everyone’s talking about what we can do for the algorithm. It feels like we’re paying sacrifices at the altar of this great god. We need to be super mindful and aware that we’re engaging with this spirit. I’m trying to really put blinders on to the algorithm and still make art from a very authentic place.

It’s hard because you don’t want to be a slave to the algorithm, but at the same time, learning how to ‘befriend’ it can be so beneficial for you.
It’s interesting because we have this like human-made spirit realm that can change your whole life in the real world, but still feels quite vacuous and disingenuous when you’re in it. It sucks you into a portal. It has a real-life impact on your opportunities and your finances. It’s a very strange relationship. The internet obviously made my career, and I think the important thing for me to remember is that it’s just a communication tool to talk to very real people who are in a relationship with my music.

That’s a really important reminder. In those ways, I suppose it’s becoming a way more ‘real’ part of our experience, even if intuitively it feels very intangible.
Yeah, it’s completely intangible, but also so real. I’m still really struggling with my relationship to it. It’s interesting seeing real musical heavyweights, real masters of their craft, still having to engage with the algorithm and starting from zero again. A very strange world. But I think if you’re viewing the internet as a sentient beast, you can also change your relationship with it to be a positive one, a symbiotic one, a respectful one. I’m trying to change my perspective on it a bit so that it doesn’t consume my mental health.

We all love to complain and hate on it, but it’s not going away any time soon.
I love to complain about it too, but the more I complain about it, the more it feels like this villain living in my pocket. My heart rate and anxiety skyrocket. I have almost started to think about it as a little kid, like “Oh, okay, that’s cute. What you say isn’t going to be the end-all be-all for me, but I still have love for you.” It’s an active process. I feel like a caveman — like I’m still running from apex predators, mentally, when I pick up my phone sometimes. I don’t know how to deal with the onslaught of all the information. But I’m getting there.

We’re all working on it. But by the time we get used to it, the whole metaverse evolves again, and we get to a new level.
Yeah, there’s a new level and it’s more complicated. It’s really about my relationship to having my whole livelihood exist online, as opposed to like a landscaper’s relationship with the Internet; I think they are vastly different. I do have fantasies of just becoming a gardener and not having to tie my financial security to something so volatile.

Well, I suppose every path has its own volatility. You just have to pick your own source of instability and anxiety.
Yeah. That’s true.

I love how you referred to the Internet as the spirit world. It made me think of how ghosts of ourselves will always exist in that realm. For example, you removed your older posts on your Instagram, but your earlier career is still so documented online. Your past versions will always live there.
It’s funny how a lot of people have a version of me and my career in their heads that existed when I was like 22. I’ve changed so much, but you immortalise yourself at certain moments of your life online, and it’s inescapable. Those ghosts of my past archetypes are not me anymore. They exist in a different realm. They are characters that people can associate with the music and how they’re experiencing it in their own lives, however they see fit. But it’s none of my business, you know?

I guess you have to let them live their own life. Do you also feel like this with releasing Smoochies? Giving away this persona?
Yeah, there’s practice in radical acceptance of the fact that I have to let her go. But I really have made my peace with it. I think that regardless of how Smoochies evolves in the world, I’m proud of the music. I’m proud of myself and my team. I’ve created some really important bonds through making this project, so that’s special to me in my personal life. That’s the most important thing. There’s stuff around this album that exists just for me, that I hold very near and dear to my heart. There are private parts of Smoochies that I get to put in a little locket and keep close to my heart.

Like a little secret…
Exactly!