The Sea Within On the Making Of “Spaciousness”
How does "Spaciousness" reflect your musical journey and growth as a band?
Ingis (singer/guitarist): I feel like we were searching for our sound for so long. It was there all along but it felt like it came more by a fluke, there was no way to pinpoint what we sounded like. And for a long time, that was a huge freedom. But it also became hindering not to be able to take any song from our treasure chest and do a sea within the version of it. We couldn’t tell why a song was or wasn’t working. When “Spaciousness” took form, there was just something about it that defined us: our sound. The variation between big and small, the fast played but chill to listen to guitar, the melodies that easily stick to your brain. Well, at least mine. Some kind of experiment within every song. The lyrics have a clear meaning to us and a touch of nature. That’s it, that’s us.
Jesaia (guitar): To me, “Spaciousness” reflects the change in how I ”see” the band. We are a very different band today than we were when we started the creative process of this song. I had a really strong view of what the band ”was” and with “Spaciousness” that has changed.
How did you approach the arrangement and composition of the music for this song?
Ingis: It’s hard to remember but we worked and experimented a lot with the dynamic, letting the word Spaciousness wash over with a huge amount of energy just to retreat and take down the intensity again. I remember being so frustrated about it at first, because it really messed with my impulses that I got from the music. But after getting used to it I wouldn’t want it any other way. And listening to it now, as a listener for the first time and not as someone playing the song I’m really happy about the arrangement and dynamics.
The lyrics came almost like they chose us and not the other way around. We had some beautiful phrases that mostly Jesaia had collected, we picked some of them, rewrote and wrote new phrases to link it all together. My heart was set on one single tragedy that it needed to bleed into the song. I put meaning into phrases that I don’t think are the first thing you’d think about. And seeing others’ interpretations of the song shows it leaves more space for others to feel what they need to feel compared to if we would have been more specific in the lyrics.
Jesaia: I think it started with the repetitive guitar riff. Then the song evolved naturally. Playing the verse became like some kind of meditation. I remember that we rehearsed and wrote changes to the song for four months. It was almost the only song we played at the time.
Can you talk about the recording and production process for "Spaciousness?"
Ingis: We started out in the studio about two years ago, recording drums with Victor who was never a band member but has helped us out more than once. We didn’t have a drummer at the time but we didn’t want to let it stop us from recording our music. Then we recorded the other instruments at home miles away from each other. We knew exactly how we wanted the song to sound having worked on arranging it for so long so it wasn’t a problem that we were not all in one place. Then we sent our wav files to Dante, our drummer, who mixed and mastered the song.
Jesaia: Even though we had a clear vision of what the song should sound like I think Dante and Jasmine have brought their own ideas into the creative process while recording. While writing I never pictured the song with that many vocal harmonies, which Jasmine is great at. And Dante has taken creative decisions while mixing that makes the song what it is. He put a lot more distortion on the guitars which makes the song bigger, I think. But that is details, the main vision has been the same all along.
Can you tell us more about you as a band?
Ingis: We were formed in 2016 as people who just wanted to play music together. Then we became more serious, we wanted to be a real band. We had a lot of changes in band members because a lot of them were students at the university and after they finished their studies they’d moved back to their home town. When both Jesaia and Jasmine were moving we decided to try this long-distance band relationship and do fewer but more effective rehearsals and a lot of work at a distance, have band meetings online and stuff like that. Now, only the Drummer Dante lives in Växjö, where the band rehearses and origins from.
Jesaia: It’s hard to make it work but also more fun when we meet up. We’ve released two songs in 2024 and have plans for more during 2025. We have a gig in Kalmar on 18 January and hopefully lots more during the year.
Are there any specific themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?
Ingis: We do want people to believe that change for the better is possible. We connect human emotions with our love for nature, using a lot of analogies from nature to describe the good and the bad. In spaciousness, in particular, we try to bring comfort in a period of grief.
Jesaia: Our name, The Sea Within, reflects those themes very well I think. Nature and introspection. We all have an ocean of depth inside us.
