By Katie Li

December 13th 2025

There’s a certain preconscious that ties our vision to music, precedent to any flashy visualizer, an abstracted album cover, or a flamboyant performance outfit. In the split-second of white noise and blankness before a song plays, you’re in purgatory—at the mercy of an ambiguous, yet certain severance of visual focus from immediate reality. And when that first sound hits, you’re indiscriminately reborn with a new, uncontrollable visual impulse: rational or surreal, slight or all-consuming, good or bad. For Copenhagen-born experimental electronic artist Saska, it’s this predestined flirtation between music and vision that defines the music world he’s created. “I’m very visually tied to my music,” he tells me from a cabin in the middle of Scandinavian nowhere, and that synesthetic instinct has guided him since childhood. Though he’s self-proclaimed his first beat as ‘so bad,’ he laughs when I ask him if it’s still online (so I can leak it…), it’s that same beat where he spotted the shape of a snowman hidden inside a MIDI pattern. Somewhere on a cracked version of FL Studio on the 11 year-old Saska’s half-broken Windows computer, lies this mysterious boom bap beat—unrecognizable to his current sound—that ultimately hooked him on producing music. 

Even his stage name is a visual decision—borrowed not for meaning, but for the way the letters in Sasha looked to him, inspired by the name of an older neighbor he barely knew. And despite possessing a noticeable aversion to virtually all things Denmark, he still heels to his homeland’s visual language: a combination of lions, stars, stripes, and aesthetic Parliament website designs. Those symbols quietly reappear as the scaffolding for Saska’s own imagined nation, its flag hanging behind him on our Zoom call and, also, weaving between ¹ flashes of his music videos. That urge to build his own world, replete with flag and soundtrack, is part rebellion, part irony: both a play on Europe’s “really creepy uprise of nationalism” and a reaction to the collectivist mindset and subtle class dynamics Saska observed while coming of age in the so-called utopia that is Scandinavia. And while he was quick to clarify that his satirical political touch isn’t the main force in his music—it’s subconscious, an acknowledgement rather than declaration—it’s unsurprising that this disillusionment is met with him chasing doses of city life with long periods of isolation. First, to Athens, where he recorded his recent sophomore album EmpirE in a Grimes-esque isolation and, then, to the undisclosed cabin I speak to him from: with his only hints to its location, a population count of nine and internet signal so bad, our call drops briefly the second he joins. “Everything I want to do in life is just not to do it the Copenhagen way,” he vows, ““my overall goal with music is about successfully creating a very cohesive and interesting world where I have things to say—or at least contribute—until I have nothing to say.”

Sonically, this manifests in what Saska loosely categorizes as experimental pop, or “just electronic,” an eclectic sound that pulls from dubstep’s heft, emo electro-pop melodrama, cloud rap haze, ‘00s europop maximalism, complextro’s randomness, and hyperpop’s glitchy landscape. Even hints of French house creep in: “Asphalt” rides a clicky, synth-heavy motif that builds and spirals in a way that wouldn’t feel out of place mixed in with Justice’s remix of Soulwax’s “NY Excuse.” The track sits on EmpirE, which—appropriate to its name—feels impossibly grand, epic, vast, and individual. You can’t talk about ² EmpirE without considering its predecessor, ³ the EP ElitE. Incessantly referencing wealth and status, both feature Saska’s most aggressive deliveries yet: a far cry from the dancier, poppier, hook-driven tracks that defined the early Dosis and single-runs phase of his discography. ElitE almost reads like a prequel, laying the groundwork for the sonic and thematic intensity that Empire fully realizes. 

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In contrast to his often monotonal, whispered baritone vocal delivery, the aggression comes almost solely through his synth design and is best exemplified by the EP’s first track “Circuit,” which replicates the industrial vigor of the insane synths in Salem’s “Starfall” (seriously, listen to it, I never thought I’d see the day…). It’s dramatic with a haunting emotional edge, its only vocals being chopped up, reversed loops of title word “elite,” the perfect announcement to debut this new, darker Saska-era. Still, where synths set both project’s grandiosity, the vocals—or, perhaps, the wide range of them—set the atmosphere. “Dirty” gives us semblances of the earlier, more pop-oriented Saska, filtered through a vocal delivery with a bratty edge reminiscent of MySpace scene music à la Medic Droids. “ElitE” unfolds as a conversation, both literally between two voices and more subtly between its instrumental responses to their words: progressively increasing in chaos and urgency. The two voices, one masculine and one feminine, were pulled from Google translate literally simultaneously as Saska was producing the beat and it’s a masterclass in ADHD versus multitasking. With the unnatural cadence of AI voice to the hyper-perceptive human brain, it creates an uncanny-valley sense of unease that echoes the dystopic ethos of the projects. Yet, that tension is partially resolved by the unseriousness of the words they repeat dozens of times: “I’m a f****** millionaire” and "I'm the elite.” While his other track’s titles also make the social commentary overt (there’s “Property,” “Fear,” and “2028”), it’s this track that embodies the satire as the clearest, most plainly-stated vessel for Saska’s critique of class and power. But it’s album title track “EmpirE” that combines all these aspects in totality, with its 45-second intro building suspense in his most chaotic way to date. By my count, there are at least six voices by my count: all some disembodied variations of 20th century wartime announcements, whether like NASA’s narration of the moon landing during the Cold War or like Operation Wandering Soul’s announcements unleashed as psychological warfare on American soldiers by the Viet Cong… I digress (Saska’s world is maybe too cohesive, he got me! I’m lost!). But, moments later, he drops into an ever-moving synth drop so epic it could score every kid’s YouTube gaming montage—the kind that would track every pinpoint headshot in a first-person shooter—if it had dropped a decade ago. 

Though he began with snowman MIDI patterns and a faint ambition to capture the energy of mid-2010s FIFA soundtracks, Saska’s music has since evolved into a sharp, often cynical critique of modern society—a shift he jokes “works better in some German province party way.” For now, that FIFA-inspired goal will have to wait: “Right now, I feel like I’m not running out of ideas,” he says. “I’m very pissed about a lot of stuff every day. There’s always a new issue I want to talk about, so I’m definitely not going to stop.” And like the megalomaniac he imagines running his own country, Saska is determined to do it all himself: no more features, no collaborations, full creative control, even in the wake of breakthroughs like his feature with Che and a recently wrapped tour with Frost Children. His world—musical, visual, and utterly individual (take that collectivist Scandinavia)—is still expanding, one uncompromising idea and creepy voice at a time.

Read my full conversation with Saska below.

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First off, congrats on your album release last month and the upcoming tour with Frost Children! How’s it going?

I'm just staying in a cabin in the middle of nowhere right now. And I'm in a town where there's nine people.

Wow. Does it have one of those welcome signs that says population count, 9?

No, it's not even there because they're probably embarrassed or something. 

Well, I think that's a plus.

No, it's cool because I used to live in Athens, Greece for a few years, which is a very populated city and then I've just been in a transitional period in my life. So, I grew up in cities—always been in a city. So, I wanted to try this for a bit. I've been here for a month and a half just kind of prepping for [the Frost Children] tour and just trying something else. And it's different. It's very different.

One of the things that really stood out to me was how you inject your music with commentary on class,  wealth, status, and inequality. In fact, the music scene you’re a part of has been labeled as ‘recession music.’ What are the things and experiences that drew you to focus on class, especially growing up in Scandinavia where there’s less of an obvious wealth divide?

Growing up in Scandinavia, we have a really working healthcare and welfare system; a middle class and obviously less inequality than the rest of the world. But in my experience growing up there, that doesn't mean that inequality is not there. Because Scandinavia is seen as this perfect continent where everything just works, so a lot of s*** just goes under the radar all the time. 

And, also, my comments on class are mainly because I've grown up where you don't comment on class. It's kind of taboo to talk about money. It's this very old Scandinavian thing where you're not allowed to be proud of your accomplishments. If I got straight A's in school and I told someone, they would be like, “you're too much right now.” So, I've always felt like that was repressing some part of me because I wanted to express myself and every time I did that, someone would be like, "Yo, chill the f*** out." And so for many years, I dealt with having to listen. For example, I just walked around the town recently and some kids were talking s*** about like me,  but that's the Danish thing you do every day: listen to some stupid comments if you're expressing yourself in some way. 

With EmpirE and ElitE, I wanted to be a part of the elite so I can freely express who I want to be. Who doesn't want to be rich? [Laughs.] And the funny thing is that the upper class people are trying so hard to be lower class people—like the upper class people are really embarrassed to be rich. And making Empire, I just was dealing with how that pissed me off a lot, seeing celebrities, but they just wear really blah outfits because they are trying to look poor. 

No, I totally get what you mean. I feel like that's very common here too. Made me think of the whole Balenciaga ethos and how they sometimes take straight up inspiration from clothes they see homeless people in. And you grew up in Denmark?

Yeah, totally. And yes, I grew up in Copenhagen. 

I think that kind of goes into what you were talking about with the collectivist mindset in Northern Europe.  How else would you say growing up in Copenhagen has influenced your music and sound?

It has done the complete opposite. Everything I want to do in life is just not to do it the Copenhagen way. Such a big hatred for my city. I hate everything in it. And so I've been doing the opposite of what everyone's doing in Copenhagen and that has led me somewhere which is kind of fun. But it kind of proves my point that it's very collectivist: you need to be a part of some sort of social group and then within that group there's many people judging you. If you're expressing yourself artistically or if you're flaunting in Denmark, they'll be like, “you suck.” It's really deeply rooted in the culture and sounds like it's not a problem. But it is truly a problem, because if you look at Danish export of music in the last whatever f****** forever, there's nothing. No good music. There's some good movies but, of music? There’s nothing. So, I just knew that I had to do the complete opposite of what everyone's doing basically. And that's a part of the fuel I guess—to rebel.

Your EP Elite’s title track feels like the most on the nose or obvious manifestation of those class commentaries like in the lyrics, repeating “I'm the elite” and "I'm a millionaire” a bunch of times. What was the thought process behind that song? And I wanted to know more about the choice you had to kind of have it play out a conversation between I assume you and then some AI siri-esque female voice.

That whole EP actually came because I lived in Greece for a few years and Greece is very much like America. It's more individualist. Each building on the street is a different color, has different architecture, and it's so funny to witness the complete opposite. And then I went to my sister's apartment in Copenhagen for Christmas. Everything was perfect and I just made that whole EP in five days with no MIDI. Just my computer and the keyboard on my computer. And for the “ElitE” song, the chat style just came to me. It's not a secret or anything, and I just used the Google translate voice. When I was creating it, I just felt like I wanted to feel like a millionaire. I literally made the beat as I was typing out the stuff in the Google Translate voice. But thinking about it now, I don't know.. the fuel in my stuff is very spontaneous and, then, it's right there and I need to capture it and put it in a song. Why did I feel that? Maybe because I felt repressed by the people around me and now I just want to be a* millionaire and live my own life. I don't know. There were so many feelings in that song and I wanted to build EmpirE on top of that.

So you recorded that whole EP in just five days. Do you typically kind of work like that, all in one go, behind the scenes?

Yeah. I mean, I try to stay active as much as possible and just keep working. But I am very much like a once every second week kind of person, because I put so much into each song that it drains me. Every time I make music, I want to die. So I can make beats and stuff, but with my own stuff, it's so mentally challenging for me to make.

That totally makes sense. You always want to feel represented and fully aligned with your own creative and personal work. You’re more of a perfectionist then?

Yeah, for sure, it's a whole thing. In the process of making the EmpirE album, I stayed inside for a month because my partner was in Greece and I ordered food every day and knew I just had to finish it. I kind of went crazy because it would be 40 takes and just one word’s different, or some s*** like that. Just completely losing my mind. 

The thing that always comes to mind for me is how Grimes kind of recorded Visions all in isolation and stuff. So was your isolation a planned thing or did it just kind of happen?

It just kind of happened because I didn’t have that many friends in Greece, so I would just stay inside. The time I’d be social would be in New York where all my friends are. Or in London. But Greece was just the most random place to live ever and the language barrier made it hard. So it was a mixture of “all right, I have a month now. So, I'm just not going to go outside for a month.”

How is being completely isolated, not going outside? How do you think that impacted the album and everything?

I think it just made it easier for me to focus on what I want feeling energy-wise into my album and sort out: what kind of story do you want to tell with the album? What fuels me right now? What politically pisses me off? It was easier for me to be alone and not have any person tell me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to order some weird s***, like a bunch of sodas, I would just order it. It was very much my own process of working on this album which is awesome and that's why it's like my album. 

You were just locked in. Do you think you would kind of do that process again in future?

I mean, I'm still mentally affected by that month in August. So probably not. But, I don't know, isolation's cool and it's easier for me to focus. I grew up in the city and I wanted to live in the city but it scares me if I'll ever be able to focus like I'm doing right now [in the middle of nowhere].

Your first album, Dosis, came out a year and a half ago. How do you feel like your music has changed from Dosis to Empire? I think when I was listening, Empire felt more experimental, less of a focus on vocal top lines or catchiness.

Yeah, Dosis was kind of like the prototype of what I wanted to do with my new project Saska. Most people think that I just started making music, but I've been putting out songs on Soundcloud since 2012, 2013…, I kind of get lost. I've been trying to make it for so long. Over the years, I accumulated a bunch of synthesizers and cool gear that I saved up for. I used to work as a delivery guy and the money I stacked up would go to rent and, then, gear. At first, I made the Scandinavian mistake of making my music sound perfect in a Swedish pop, kind of perfect sound. And with Dosis, I wanted to do the complete opposite. I sold all of my gear, got rid of my microphone, and then I had to improvise on how I was going to get the vocal down. And so Dosis is like the prototype. Where if I felt like, “ew I hate high frequencies,” I'll make it all low end. With ElitE and EmpirE, I've kind of seen the benefits of actually adding that back in. Now I want to make it more hi-fi. I will make it sound more expensive.

Is your stuff on Soundcloud from that time still up at all?

[Laughs] Hell no. It's so bad. It's literally from when I was 13 years old..

Fingers crossed, we’ll get it one day. That's so awesome though. You self-taught yourself production, piano, and synths, but how’d you get this interest for making music in general? 

I think my dad gave me Cubase when I was 6 years old.It's one of my favorite memories with my dad, though I mostly grew up with my mom and my sister. But I just opened it and I was like, "What the f*** is this s***? Let me go back to being 6 years old, whatever." But it kind of stuck somewhere in my mind. I remember when I was probably around 10, I found a cracked FL studio. I don't know why I wanted to get into it, but I was really into underground rap from the 90s like MF Doom, J Dilla, and lo-fi. I just wanted to make these kind of boom bap beats. I remember making my first beat and, because I'm very visually tied to my music, I remember I made the song and was like, "Whoa, This is like a snowman." I was blown away with this 10, 11 year old imagination and then I just could never stop ever since. So, it just made me f****** addicted. 

So you kind of immediately jumped in, you didn't go through the GarageBand phase.

I was on Windows. I didn't have money for I didn't have Apple or anything like I was on a Windows computer with missing keys… my MacBook is missing keys right now. That's how I do it! I've now been on Ableton for many years now and I'm happy I switched up on that, honestly. But I mean, it's just a program. 

You touched on 90s underground rap but who are your other musical influences? With your music, I hear so many: from drill to cloud rap to dubstep. Even French House, with “Asphalt” reminding me of that one Justice Remix of the Soulwax song, “NY Excuse.”

I grew up listening to boom bap and then in 2014, Yung Lean since they're from Scandinavia too. Some of them [Sad Boys] came to Copenhagen to smoke weed outside my school and s***. It was like, whoa, we finally have some people to look up from the same region. When I was younger, I would also just listen to what my mom had on CD: Bloc Party and Danish stuff. And then as I got older, I got into a pop phase with ‘80s and ‘90s pop. I fell in love with ‘80s synths. Over the years, I kind of just picked up what I really liked and started developing a sound. 

If you could describe your music genre-wise in just a few sentences or words, what would that be? 

I've had a hard time describing it honestly. I just always say it's experimental pop music. Or just electronic music honestly.

Someone needs to come up with a name for this type of music. I guess there’s indie sleaze, but I hate that label and artists don't like that either. There's just nothing that's really caught on.

Indie sleaze is creepy. That era was just so creepy. I have no memory from that era, except when I was 8 or 9 years old, I was playing FIFA, which is a football game. They used to have these crazy soundtracks. Even in 2018, 2019, I wanted to make beats that sound like the FIFA soundtracks from when I was a kid playing on my 360.

That's a bar right there because I feel like I think about FIFA soundtracks all the time. I always remember FIFA 14 and how, for the World Cup year, they went off. Do you remember that soundtrack with that Empire of the Sun song? It was “Alive,” I think, and there was also “Dreaming” by Smallpools.

Yeah, fire. And I can't claim it because I saw that Bassvictim was talking about that being their main inspiration. I feel like it just resonates with their stuff. I guess their inspiration resonated with me too because it was the same I had as a kid.

I’ve seen FIFA incorporating more of this experimental electronic stuff. I know 2Hollis’ “Poster Boy” was on the new one, like what? So maybe you’ll be on FIFA soon.

Hey, yeah that would be nice. It'd be so cool if some kids played it and thought, "Yeah, this song is fire." And they have the same experience and, in 20 years, they make bangers.

Do you have any songs you think encapsulate that vibe or general feeling?

I haven't really been able to recreate that vibe for my own music. I feel like there's definitely some of the Hellp’s music that that would work but personally I don't really have that. I feel like my music works more in some German province party way. [Laughs] I don't know.

Special shout out to your remix on Metro Station’s “Shake It”. That is genuinely one of my favorite songs ever and I've been looking for a remix on that song for so long and now I'm finally content. Do you plan on making more remixes? I feel like there's a big culture with that now which I really love. 

There definitely is, especially if you DJ. I don't know how I feel about DJing to be honest. I prefer to perform with a microphone, but if I do have to DJ, I will play my remixes. And I feel like I did play it at some point. But yeah, that song, I mean, I felt the same. I was like, this song is so good. And it's like no one has remade it into a 2025 forward kind of feel. So I had to do it.

I feel like one thing I really liked from Metro Station is the kind of whispered vocals he does. And I feel like you sometimes use a similar delivery, which is awesome.

Yeah, thank you. It's like that melodic, lower voice. I feel like it works really well with my vocal because I'm a baritone. My whole life I wanted to sing high notes like f****** Bruno Mars but, now, I can actually do something right with my true natural voice.

I wanted to pivot into speaking about your visuals, which you talked a little bit about. I see the Saska flags behind you, too. I love flags and symbols and I feel like you do such a great job with them as well.

Thank you. It all ties to EmpirE. So one thing I didn't fully get into with EmpirE is the megalomaniac kind of feel. Like wanting to just control the world, own a country or whatever. And I was just, one day, over a year ago, like: “if I had my own country what would that be?” So I spent so long designing it. I started with the structure of the Danish flag and then built on it, adding my favorite symbols in there. The lion is from the Danish royal crest I think. Then I reworked it with stars and I played around with it a little bit. but yeah, that's the flag of Saska’s country, I guess.

It's playing on the whole nationalist thing, because I'm definitely not a nationalist. I would abandon my country. The minute it goes towards Russia, I'm out of here. Obviously, there is a really creepy uprise of nationalism and the right wing, especially in America. But whatever goes on in America, it's going to eventually come to Europe, it just takes a few years. It's a scary movement and it's kind of playing around with that. And it's also just design-wise and visually, Denmark has some of the coolest government symbols and designs ever.

Really? I need to check it out.

Best websites, best designs.

Do you feel like the music kind of comes first and that dictates the visuals or is it the other way around?

I feel like I'm just mentally in a different world. So whatever I create… that sounds so douchy, but I actually mean I'm somewhere else sometimes. Whatever I create in that mood, in that setting, when I feel best when I'm alone, I can fully get into it. And it will eventually feel cohesive in my universe as Saska. Sometimes it’s a synth, like when I saw the snowman pattern. Or where there's a creepy government, it all fits together. And I do everything visually. I edit all my videos, make my logos, the banner, flyers, everything.

I want it to feel like a cohesive experience. I love having control obviously, but it's also just like I want the experience for my listener or my supporter to have a cohesive experience where everything kind of makes sense within the world. It’s really important for me like: if I fail doing that, then I just fail my whole project. So that's why I always want to do everything, edit the videos, and create the banners or flyers.

I totally see that. I think the kind of magnum opus, for me at least, of all your visuals was in the “Empty Land” music video, where it kind of felt like the camera was mass surveillance. What was some of the symbolism in that video?

For that video I work with Poppy Gavin who has done a lot of videos for che, who is one of my friends. So, I included the guys on this project because I feel like they really understood where I wanted to take the EP. We ran around New York when it was cold as f***. In the Financial District and Wall Street, filming people and running around. And they created some awesome CGI stuff with my flag and that video turned out great. 

Now that you mention che, you have your song with him, and have done a few one-off features on singles. But, the rest of your projects are entirely you. Do you plan on doing any more collaborations in the future? 

Probably not. There's obviously some people that I look up to that I would love to collaborate with. But probably not any collaborations for now, at least.

Totally get that. You are touring with Frost Children in just a few days. How are you feeling about that and how did you guys start working together?

I was in New York in May and it was one of my last days in New York before I had to go back home. They reached out to me two months prior to that and just said they f***** with “Asphalt”. And then I saw they were playing a show that night, DJing, opening or some s*** at Baby’s [All Right] and I was like, "Yo, I'm going to pull up.They introduced me to all their friends and then we had drinks and that was really fun. And then they were in Barcelona in June playing Primavera and they invited me out for that. I was there for three days and they were like, “you're going to be our EU opener.”

And it's your first official tour too right? 

Yeah, yeah.

I wish you could have done the US part for it, too, because I just saw their show in New York. It was genuinely probably the best show I've ever been to. It was crazy.

No, I'll be there for sure. I also played at the Echo [in LA]. I had ethn reis open for me. Such a nice guy. That was a great show. It was fun to be in LA.

Last question: what's your overall goal with music and, what’s next for you post-tour and post-EmpirE?

My overall goal with music is about successfully creating a very cohesive and interesting world where I have things to say or at least contribute until I have nothing to say. Right now, I feel like I'm not running out of ideas. I'm very pissed about a lot of stuff every day. There’s always a new issue that I want to talk about so I'm definitely not going to stop. Post-tour, I’ll probably just put out some new music.

Do you feel expressing your political opinions is one of the most important things in your musical world?

It’s not even about saying or doing anything. I feel like if you are an artist today, if you’re not talking about it in some kind of way, you're ignoring the obvious situation of the world right now. It's impossible. I would say that my music does maybe have a political message but it’s not the main force. It's not like I sit down and I kind of write like “I hate Russia right now because they're invading,” but it's hard to ignore it. You know what I mean?