AÏSHA DEVI: Spirituality and Electronic Music Production

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Formerly known as Kate Wax, the Swiss-Nepalese-Tibetan producer Aïsha Devi turns electronic music production on its head. Through her magical, hypnotic electronic concoctions, Aïsha Devi loses herself in spiritual practice. She weaves together her meditation tradition with her experimental production compositions, creating a final product that embraces the abstract, the unknown, and the euphoric.

Aïsha Devi’s music is as bold as it is idiosyncratic. Devi released her debut album in 2004 under the moniker Kate Wax, and since then, Devi has continued to push the boundaries of electronic music. In 2015, Devi released her album Of Matter and Spirit, a project in which Aïsha Devi abandons her classical opera vocal training for a soft, calm, exultant sound. Yet, her ethereal music is an outlet and a product of her frustration.

Aïsha Devi departed from her former musical identity, Kate Wax, because the projects that she was producing under that moniker no longer fulfilled her, and she felt wholly disconnected to that musical presence. It was then that Devi turned to meditation, which transformed her life. Meditation fostered a period of self-discovery, and she soon realized that music production and music creation were her ways of escaping and dealing with trauma and pain. During this time, Devi spent countless hours researching psychology, science, ancient philosophies, and reading sacred texts; she also began to reconnect with her Tibetan culture and history.

The second track on the Of Matter and Spirit album is “Mazda,” a song filled with high-pitched, helium-inspired vocals and synth-heavy production. The music video for this track, directed by Chinese artist Tianzhuo Chen, is bizarre, overwhelming, and flooded with spiritual symbols and motifs.

Aïsha Devi pushes back against conformity and conventionality, and her video for “Madza” is no exception. Devi explains in an interview with Dazed, “when I’m singing I’m in a meditative state and I’m mixing mantras and I’m working on the frequency of my voice more than the significance of the words. After a while, the repetition makes you lose the sense of the words and you come to a state of serenity. In Western Europe, we love words and we love a message. To me, pop music is so connected with advertisement and the format is so close to propaganda. I like to get away from that pop format and transcend that square vision of European music.”

This producer’s sophomore album, DNA Feelings, was released in February of 2018 via Houndstooth. This project embraces the intersection of music and meditation, and Devi has since proclaimed that “clubs and raves are the new temples.”

Devi is also the cofounder of the record label Danse Noir, a collective platform in which all its artists are free of genre. The Danse Noir imprint encourages individuality and unique expression. In an interview with Fader, Aïsha Devi explains that her vision and goals for a label are to “extend a family, transgress hierarchy, and use independent platforms such as Bandcamp.”

Learn more about Aïsha Devi here: Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / SoundCloud / Bandcamp / Spotify