The All American ROLI Road Trip

From Brooklyn to LA: Sean Davis and the Seaboard RISE hit the road

12 April 2018

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.”

The RV

Sean and Ryan's RV.

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.”

The Plains

The flat plains of Paris, Illinois.

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.

The Desert

Composing at White Sands, New Mexico. Credit: Ryan Forsythe.

Sean surveys the Arizona mountains with his Seaboard RISE 25. Credit: Ryan Forsythe

Los Angeles

The Salton Sea in California was one of the last destinations on the road.

Sean's studio in LA.