Ashley Ray Simon Knows Technically Perfect Can Feel Completely Wrong
Punk Head: You talk about chasing instinct over perfection. What does “perfection” actually sound like when you hear it in your own music?
Ashley Ray Simon: Perfection, to me, is something that feels alive, playful and spontaneous, rather than overworked, controlled or too polished.
Achieving that is often a dance between deep focus and letting go. What sounds like perfection to me might be technically imperfect.
Punk Head: Strange Animals was apparently born before you had time to overthink it. Is overthinking one of your biggest creative enemies?
Ashley Ray Simon: Absolutely. Probably one of my biggest enemies in life in general, haha. I think there’s a time for reflection and refinement, but you have to be careful not to interfere with whatever the satellites have tapped into.
Punk Head: There’s something almost anti-digital about your obsession with unquantized rhythm. What do you think gets lost when music is made too perfectly to a grid?
Ashley Ray Simon: Haha, I guess I kind of am, or at least I have a romanticism around analogue, unpredictable artists making noise. Grid-locked music can feel predictable and rigid to me. Sometimes it actually creates a physical reaction, almost like sensory stress.
What’s so great about live music is the way things move and breathe. But I’ve learnt that doesn’t have to mean playing without a click or set tempo. It’s about what happens around that tempo, the way a beat pushes or pulls or a drummer sitting slightly behind it creating that drunk feel, like the world’s slowing down to vibe, I love that. Questlove and D’Angelo’s collaboration on Voodoo is a great example of that. So much character in that pocket.
Punk Head: You kept the sung trumpet that started life as a placeholder. Do you have a particular weakness for accidents that work?
Ashley Ray Simon: I’ve got a love for it, for sure. When something feels fun and exciting, makes you laugh, it’s usually worth keeping.
Punk Head: Why Strange Animals? What does that phrase allow you to say about yourself that a more literal title wouldn’t?
Ashley Ray Simon: It’s actually a line I came across in a poem by Lord Byron. It wasn’t necessarily intended as a statement about myself.
It’s fascinating how human nature gets affected, or even warped, by social conditioning. I think there’s something interesting in that tension. I think it’s important for art to explore ideas that might be at odds with social constructs. It inspires us to question things, open ourselves up to different possibilities, and consider aspects of ourselves we might otherwise suppress.
Strange Animals felt like a phrase that left room for all of that without trying to define it too literally.
Punk Head: If the subconscious is the thing you’re trying to capture, what happens when the subconscious starts recognising the aesthetic you’re looking for? In other words, can instinct itself become a style that you then have to escape from?
Ashley Ray Simon: That’s such an interesting question. I guess if you recognise a particular pattern in what you’re doing instinctively, there’s a danger of becoming attached to it and trying to recreate it. At that point, you’re potentially moving away from instinct and towards consciously reproducing a style.
I think the challenge is to let instinct guide you without being too attached to the outcome. And I think that’s influenced by what we’re exposed to, so it’s a reminder to mix up your intake and seek out a range of art, music, conversation and culture.
That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a particular style consistently coming through an artist. It’s beautiful when someone has a distinct voice, almost like a channel that filters things into distinct shapes.
So I’d say instinct is more of an approach than a style. And if a particular style consistently comes through, perhaps that’s simply part of who that artist is at that point in their journey. There’s nothing to say it can’t change as they change.
