“Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.” – Octavia E. Butler
Everywhere you look, in everything you read, in every conversation, the feeling is mutual and palpable: the world is massively broken right now.
Music ushers the way forward through the dark times and for Imaad Wasif, this has always been his self-declared purpose.
The driving force behind the influential 90s slowcore band lowercase, Wasif now delivers his 7th solo album, Superconsciousness, an album of singular focus – transmutation. Pain transformed into radiance. Darkness met with refusal to surrender.
Written and recorded between 2022 and 2025, Superconsciousness took form during a period of personal and global instability. In addition to touring as the fourth member of Yeah Yeah Yeahs for their Cool It Down album cycle, Wasif weathered the impact of the Eaton Canyon fire, which displaced him from his home in Altadena. These experiences left a mark, but the resulting album is less a document of trauma than a testament to what can emerge from it.
Produced by Lewis Pesacov (Julius Eastman, Wild Up), who previously mixed So Long Mr. Fear, the album blends early electronic influences, layered rock, and what Wasif calls goth-folk. “There were 34 songs at one point,” Wasif recalls. “I wrote and recorded everywhere – hotel rooms, my house in L.A., at Bobb Bruno’s studio. Something about the haze of sleeplessness that comes on like a druggy film-it snags images and ideas from a distant but familiar place. When you can’t tell dreams from reality, that’s my hallowed ground.”
Recording sessions were woven between tours, with contributions from musicians Heather McIntosh (Elephant Six Collective), Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Dylan Fujioka (Meatbodies), and Garrett Ray (Vampire Weekend). The album was later mixed by Derek Coburn (Chelsea Wolfe, Willie Nelson), whose approach focused on preserving the emotional clarity of Wasif’s original demos. “The goal was to dismantle it and retain the god-spark, the origin source without losing the pure energy of the demos,” Wasif explains.
The release of Superconsciousness also marks the launch of Wasif’s own imprint, Voidist Records – a move toward full creative and catalog control. “The old ways of the music industry are dead. Future consciousness dictates a new autonomy.”
