Meet AZADI.mp3: the British-Iranian artist making left-field pop with punk energy

Written by Nour Khairi, Interview by Dalia Al-Dujaili

Juliette Motamed, otherwise known as AZADI.mp3, is a British-Iranian artist and actor, merging her hypnotic voice with a futuristic pop sound and punk energy in her latest single NAZAR. The song is, in her words, about “being fucking angry” and releasing resentments, captured by the music video featuring the artist and her underground girl gang roaming the streets of London at night with baseball bats, smashing everything in their way.

After her first release in 2018 titled WHO IS AZADI.mp3?, where she establishes her artistic identity through experimental sounds and visuals, AZADI has delivered striking work that teeters between vulnerability and punk-filled/grungy rebellion. Her Iranian heritage as well as her love for the club have been consistent themes in her stylistic expression, both in music and the creative direction of her clips. AZADI’s talents don’t stop there - she has also appeared on Channel 4’s Lady Parts as a drummer in the comedy’s all-female Muslim punk band.

We caught up with the rising star to learn more about her background, her creative process, and her future creative ambitions.

How has it been releasing your latest single NAZAR?

I've been really blown away that a lot of people seem to be enjoying it. It's just different for me because I'm used to keeping things very DIY. My previous releases were very much me in my room making music and it putting out… It was a little bit bigger this time around.

Tell us about any obstacles you’ve had to face in the process.

It’s interesting because when I came to write it, I was in a really fruitful period after a long time of feeling stifled in the sense of my creativity. I think during lockdown a lot of people felt like they made so much stuff. And I really found the pandemic to be quite a barren period. It was an interesting process of having to do a bit of introspection on what it was that I did want and the kind of world I wanted to create in my music.

I always find music, beyond just an aural experience, to be a really all-encompassing, even visual experience. I really see worlds when I make stuff. But, it was difficult because I was going through a lot of feelings at the time.

After that, we heard the news about Lady Parts and we were filming again. Suddenly for the first time in months and months, I was the busiest I've ever been.

Your style and the visual aspects of your work are quite striking: tell me more about that.

It’s been such a long process of me crystallising how to feel comfortable in my body and in how I present myself, but my visuals have always been second nature to me because it’s stuff I’ve been interested in since I was a kid. I think with NAZAR, I wanted to have that feeling of glitching or the world deconstructing. As you build the world, the world falls down. Just in the same way we do every day when we go online. When you look at your phone, you build an aesthetic or a life, so to speak. And every day you can build it, you can deconstruct it, you can change it.

There was an element of screens being portals – what happens if that portal glitches? Or if it’s not what you want it to be? Or if it’s something horrific and monstrous, instead of beautiful? Because NAZAR was really about giving voice to anger, I kind of wanted to ask, what if everything that you want to be so beautiful and perfect, just isn’t? What if you’ve tried so hard, and at the end of it, you’ve tried so hard to change the external but the external has really changed you? That’s the hardest thing to accept.

That’s a really moving way of putting it, does your heritage also inform your stylistic expression?

Yeah, I'm Iranian, both my parents are Iranian. But I grew up here. I came to the UK when I was one from Sweden because they both met in Sweden. The thing is, my parents were so strong on culture, I never spoke English in the house. The culture was just constantly there and it'd be in music or the food we eat or the festivals and celebrations. With NAZAR, I wanted it to have this really futuristic feel so it’s got that club kid vibe, but it was really important to me to maintain a sense of heritage throughout, even though it might be quite diffused… even the shape of the eyeliner and specific accessories that we’re going for. I find it so hard to put in words how my heritage informs the style and the way I look because it’s just so inner, it’s so me, something so core. It’s just like, I’m Iranian, innit?

I think my culture also manifests in other ways in styling, for example, in terms of the people that we bring onto the team. This really amazing stylist, Alia, was instrumental in the looks that we were carving out. She came with all these accessories, and they were perfect. To be able to work with people where you don't have to go to great lengths to explain where references come from. It’s just a really freeing experience.

That’s interesting because the topic seems to dominate a lot of the discourse right now on cultural sensitivity and production. Do you have any more thoughts on this regarding your own agency as an artist?

It’s so interesting that you bring this up because this is one 100 per cent of the reason why I even started producing my own music. I started teaching myself around five years ago. But it was in response to having had so many terrible experiences with dudes who were trying to either produce a sound for me that I didn't want, or not quite opening the space for me to be able to explore sound that I did want.

We have to really think about who's behind the scenes, who's holding the camera? Who's styling it? Who's doing storyboards? Who's thinking about the references? Who gets the references? It really makes for a space where you can feel held as a creative, if that makes sense.

So, what’s coming next for AZADI?

I’m sitting on music, you know [laughs], let me out of here. I'm ready to go.

I’ve got an EP hopefully coming out soon. In regards to the future, I want to do it all, I want to experience it all. I’m just super hyped and excited that the future is there… so silly… but that the future is there and that it’s something that I want.

Lastly, is there anything else you wanted to tell our readers?

I mean, [about NAZAR], I wanted to make a song where, if you feel like you're scared, a little bit shook, or anxious, and you want to go out but you don't feel like a bad bitch, this was a song to make you feel like a bad bitch. You’ve got the screw face on, no one's going to bother you at the club. I just want it to feel big, bad and mean.

Images by Ashley Rommelrath.