The All American ROLI Road Trip
From Brooklyn to LA: Sean Davis and the Seaboard RISE hit the road
Sean Davis composing with the Seaboard RISE 25, Maschine and a Macbook in the Salton Sea, California. (Credit: Ryan Forsythe)
Producer Sean Davis, also known as theHalfStyle, picked up a Seaboard RISE 25 “an hour and 10 minutes” before departing on a road trip across the United States in a 1970s RV. The trip took him and his friend, the photographer Ryan Forsyth, from the streets of Brooklyn through the plains of Illinois, from the Rockies to the lunar deserts of the American West — and finally to Los Angeles, where Sean emerged 10 days later buzzing uncontrollably with musical inspiration that became his new 2-part album: BLÜM.
The Seaboard was the only MIDI keyboard that Sean took with him on the voyage, and he chose it because he didn’t have any idea how to play it. “The thought behind our project was, what would happen to the creativity of a musician and a photographer when they were taken out of their comfort zone? What would happen if we had to create with whatever we brought with us?”
Sean learned how to play the Seaboard on a shaky, 2’ x 2.5’ kitchen table as the RV rumbled past old-growth forests and cornfields. The changing landscapes jolted the practices that he’d honed over 10 years of remixing and composing.
“These moments of creativity would just hit me — bang. I remember opening up the blinds and looking out and just getting lost and playing new melodies, creating new structures. I was on a learning curve with the Seaboard the whole time. It forced me to be creative in new ways. At first it was a barrier, but it became a gateway.”
“Moments of creativity would just hit me — bang. I remember opening up the blinds and looking out and just getting lost and playing new melodies.“
It was a 1997 Ford Tioga. Working in such a small space was a big change. All my work had to be on this tiny table. Typically I’d have a 61-key keyboard, a Maschine, all my hard drives… in this space I could really only have my iMac and a smaller MIDI keyboard — a Seaboard RISE 25. There were challenges from the start: how do you mount the computer and the Seaboard so they don’t rattle or fall while you’re driving? How do you make the power work through the main generator? At the beginning we were almost shell-shocked — we were definitely thinking, “What are we doing??”
The first track I worked on was in Paris, Illinois. We went there to shoot a music video. Paris Illinois is so flat — I’d never seen a landscape like that. It was really cold and really sparse. Being there gave this new sense of sparseness about what my music should be. I’m a maximalist when it comes to production, but the place brought out this cold, icy, textural feel. It’s farming country, and all you saw was dead crops. The track I was working on there is called “Demons.”
Paris, Illinois was Night One on the trip. By then I felt like I understood the Seaboard. I was using all of these totally new sounds in Equator and seeing what I could do. Everyone from the music video shoot was coming up and saying, “What is that?” It was a pretty weird moment being in an unknown place with unknown people. I said, “Oh it’s this cool thing I’m trying to make music on for the next 10 days.”
Sean Davis soundcloud Demons
The Mountains
Before I got on the road I was working on the drum beats for a remix called “Lullaby.” The cool thing about this remix is that it totally reflects the trip. 98% of it I remixed it on the road from Illinois to LA, and all the sounds you hear are from Equator played on a Seaboard. At the 14 second mark there’s a slowly rising bass that moves from a square pattern to a sawtooth that’s really aggressive and gets brighter and brighter. That’s one of those moments with Equator where I look back and think, “That’s when I really understood you.”
We were driving through the Rocky Mountains when I was remixing “Lullaby.” I remember we turned a corner and there was suddenly this wall of mountains. I’ve lived in Virginia, Florida, and New York, and I’ve never seen anything like that. And that's what "Lullaby" sounds like — there’s a sudden wall of massiveness. It explodes. You know a drop is coming, but you don't know how large it's going to be. It goes from nothing to having 30 tracks at once.
Sean Davis soundcloud Lullaby
The music I made travelling through the West was more psychedelic. It was like the soundtrack of an acid trip set to indie pop music. Not that drugs influenced it, but the time in the West became this overload of sensory information that was hard to handle. I’m seeing rock textures in the deserts. i’m seeing all kinds of things I’ve never seen before.
This was when I really started writing my dual EP. It was like living amid instant inspiration all the time. On the one hand it was terrifying — what am I doing? — but on the other it was so clear that I had to write. There were a billion songs in my head. I was recording voice notes, talking to Ryan, then stopping midsentence to go back and lay down some little melodies and move forward.
This is what the project was all about. It was about stepping outside my comfort zone and seeing the world, even if it’s just the continental US — seeing sunsets and sunrises and gorgeous mountain ranges. Driving through New Mexico at dawn is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.
From the moment I got to LA I had a studio session every day. I made an album’s worth of material in the first 10 days I was there. The trip was so incredibly inspiring, and the work I created at the end of it was not all what I had been expecting. I was supposed to be working on an original EP, but I ended up doing two remix EPs that are coming out in May.
Everything I recorded since arriving in LA was with the Seaboard, which is pretty obvious when you hear the tracks.
Arriving in LA wasn’t the end. I’m actually continuing this "Nomad Project"! I’m writing all the time. I’m going to Mexico later this year — possibly in an RV. I’m going to Bogota and Florence. Before I left New York on this trip, I think I had spent a total of 72 hours outside the city over four years. Now it’s different. I’m on solid ground, but I’m not in one place.
theHalfStyle's two-part album BLÜM will be released in May 2018. Be sure to follow theHalfStyle on instagram to learn more about the making of the album, and stay tuned to Reverb.com for some upcoming pieces by Sean too. Photographs of Sean in White Sands, the Salton Sea & Arizona by Ryan Forsythe for Coffee&Leather.
Sean Davis' 10 day route, which began in Brooklyn and ended in Los Angeles.
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