Oldest Sea

Who are you and where are you from?

Sam: Oldest Sea from rural New Jersey.

Is there any special meaning behind the band name? Is it a reference to a real place?

Sam: Yes, Oldest Sea is a reference to Panthalassa, which was the super ocean that surrounded Pangaea.

Judging from the various images that can be found from your band, be these cover artworks of the releases or band photos, it appears that a certain "impression of rural" should be invoked. What would be the idea behind these and how does the music fit into this?

Sam: We live in a rural area and generally feel more connected to nature than urban environments. The natural world is one of the things that inspire my writing the most.

Maybe it is a bit of a long shot, but would one not expect a slightly larger focus on traditional instruments, given how the music is presented? Is this something you have considered and maybe even plan to do at some point?

Sam: Yes. I'm sure we'll experiment with all kinds of instruments at some point.

How would you describe your music?

Sam: I think right now it could be described as Dark Americana with some heaviness. I say "right now" because I try not to adhere to a certain genre; I see that as restrictive and creatively stifling. This project will evolve into whatever it organically evolves into.

It is not too common to have a female vocalist playing in a band whose music can be described as funeral doom metal at times. How did this happen? What is it that a female vocalist can add to such extreme music? And please do not give me that "female touch".

Sam: I want the listener to feel my specific brand of feminine sorrow, my vulnerability, my anger, my softness, my pain etc. For me the most effective way to convey these raw emotions is with my voice.

Judging from the music that I have heard from you, there are rarely passages of intense growls or harsh screams. Why do these have hardly any place in your music?

Andrew: We love dynamics. There is a much higher dynamic range with clean singing. We love extreme music that is constantly flatlined at a 10 out of 10 on the dynamic range/loudness scale, so we add screams occasionally. We also love music that starts at 1 and builds to 10. We can only achieve this with a varied vocal approach. Also, in general, clean vocals in extreme music are not common and they are often second-rate. We are trying to bring a different vocal style to extreme music.

What would be the starting point for you? Lyrics or riffs?

Andrew: Our songs always start with a guitar or piano riff. We often translate piano parts to guitar so that we can easily recreate the sound at live shows. Lyrics and vocal melodies might be the most important part of our music, but they are always the last element to be added in our song writing process.

What does inspire you and what would be your sources in terms of the lyrics?

Sam: Right now I write mostly about personal trauma.

Your debut album "A Birdsong, A Ghost" had been the starting point for me to take a dive into your music. Can you write a bit about the idea behind it and the music that can be found on it, and especially how it differs from the other singles/EPs of yours?

Sam: I came across the last known recording of a bird native to Hawaii known as the Kauai O'o, who was declared extinct in 1989. The audio was from 1987, and it was of a male calling out to a mate not knowing he was the last of his species. There was something so profoundly heartbreaking about hearing this otherwise prosaic birdsong. That album is an expression of feminine rage, grief, loneliness, and transformation. But it's also a howl into the emptiness — a birdsong. I think this album differs from the previous releases because I kind of felt like Andrew and I arrived at a place sonically where the musical groundwork of Oldest Sea had already been laid, and with this album we could start the fun experimental part of it. I also felt like I gave myself permission to be more bold and maybe more raw with my songwriting as well as vocal delivery.

How does the title fit into all of this?

Sam: I think the above question answers this too.

And could you elaborate a bit on the cover artwork of "A Birdsong, A Ghost" and its place in the music? Is it your horse?

Sam: I just like the way it looked honestly. It has a sort of dark Americana energy and that's something I connect with. It's not my horse, though, I would love to have my own horse one day. Or maybe a donkey.

I find your music captivating and disturbing at the same time. In my review I place it in-between Earth and Nortt, with the former representing the vastness of the music and the atmosphere, while the latter represents the desolation and the depressive elements apparent in the tracks as well as the minimalism in the expression. What is it that you want to invoke in the head of the listener? Where do you place yourself in terms of the genre and other bands, especially of the funeral doom metal genre?

Andrew: Thus far, we have mixed all of our own records. We eliminate a lot of the "warmer frequencies" in the guitars and vocals to create a more icy and desolate sound. This, along with the sense of open space that reverb creates, invokes rural winter landscapes to us. I would imagine this is not unsimilar from a lot of the classic Finnish Funeral Doom bands, however, we do not consider ourselves a "traditional" Funeral Doom band. While we draw a lot from the genre, we also equally explore other types of music. Our focus is on creating interesting sounds, not strictly adhering to genre conventions.

What kind of music do you generally listen to and how do these choices contribute to the crafting of your own songs?

Andrew: We are attracted to music that genuinely conveys "negative emotion." This covers a lot of ground. Anything from melancholic ambient music and film scores to malevolent black metal. Some of our songs take equal influence from Thergothon, Jason Molina, Harold Budd and second wave black metal. This feels very natural to us because they all seem to be conveying the same emotions.

Silence is an element in your music it seems. What does it add to it and do you find it difficult to add it to songs?

Andrew: One of our biggest influences is music from films. Film score composers like John Carpenter, Pino Donaggio, Ennio Morricone, and Bernard Herrmann all regularly use dynamic shifts and silence to build the appropriate atmosphere. Many of our songs follow a three-act structure, similar to that of a traditional film. We are very comfortable using silence and other tools from film to construct a cinematic tone.

What would be your opinion on AI and music?

Andrew: I'm sure AI music will soon be indistinguishable from human made music. I'm interested in music that comes from the real human experience of anger, pain, melancholy, rage, etc. There is a lot of music made by human beings that is just as devoid of these things as AI music. I'm not interested in any music that is disingenuous. I'm not interested in music for the sake of music.