Charlotte and Luke Loseth, better known as Sea Oleena and L Ron, are a brother/sister music making team who have an almost frightening knack for completing each other’s artistic thoughts. Sea Oleena’s new LP, Shallow, has been getting praise far and wide for its subtle, textured sounds, and those were developed in part through her collaboration with L Ron as the album’s producer. On the other side of things, Sea Oleena frequently appears in L Ron’s band, Holobody, where their voices meld together to create something startlingly awesome. As people who pretty much just have food fights with our siblings, we’re impressed.L Ron’s remix of the Shallow track “If I’m” sees him taking full creative control over his sister’s song and coming back with something perfectly complementary, like it came from the other half of the duo’s shared brain. He transforms the sparse, ghostly, piano-driven piece into a glitchy downtempo jam perfect for head bopping on a cloudy today.With Sea Oleena on tour for Shallow and L Ron in Montreal working on new music, we got in touch with both of them over e-mail to find what makes them work together so well, and how L Ron churned out such a sick remix.
L Ron: Our family was musical for sure, but mostly separately just playing on our own, taking lessons, etc. I’m sure we all sang together for a church function at some point. We have two other younger sisters who are equally musical and creatively driven so it was a busy house.
Sea Oleena: Around when I was almost out of high school, we started coming up with these super folky versions of Animal Collective songs, all harmonies and acoustic strumming. There was a tambourine involved at one point. We would record our versions and put them on YouTube. Very quirky beginnings.Where did you record Shallow? Did you do anything differently than previous Sea Oleena albums you've worked on together?
L Ron: There are some key differences in the making of Shallow compared to the first two releases. For one, it was the first time I was present for most of the recording so that allowed me to bring a lot more uniformity and cohesion to the overall sound. Some of her parts were done at her place but the majority of the record was recorded in my bedroom. We also had two other musicians contributing parts, both of them named Patrick. One on the double bass and one on violin. They helped write their respective parts—it was a very open and collaborative atmosphere, and at that point we were pretty much a band. Of course, she's back to playing solo now, which totally suits the project, but it was a nice couple months surrounding the making of the album where it became something more. We played a single show in that time period with all four of us present, at the Rialto for last year's POP Montreal.
Sea Oleena: For the old albums, our separate processes were just that: separate. I would shut myself in my room and write and record and then WeTransfer everything to Luke, who would then do basically the same thing: work on his own, sending me the works in progress every now and then. For Shallow, the collaboration was physical. For example, composing the string arrangements, for the most part, involved all four of us at once crowded into Luke's little bedroom, sharing ideas, trying out sounds, searching together. But collaboration in music is something I've found difficult to sustain, so Sea Oleena live means two important things: me on my own, and no songs from Shallow. I can't reproduce them on my own, not in the same way, and have no intention to.One thing that makes Sea Oleena sound so interesting is the way the recordings amplify and take apart quiet, nuanced textures. As a producer, how do you go about finding those textures?
L Ron: Most of those nuanced textures tend to reveal themselves in the deep corners of the soundscape, the mass of sound generated by her voice and her guitar put through layers and layers of reverb. So it's never purposefully created, we'll just spot something nice early on in the mixing and bring it to the forefront. It just takes a patient ear.How would you say your music tastes differ? Luke, what would what do you add that wouldn't be there if you weren't producing? And Charlotte, vice versa?
L Ron: I think we're both very voracious consumers of music and art, and we're similar enough that there's a very good chance that what inspires one of us will also inspire the other. That said, I think she's explored the songwriter side of popular music much deeper than I, whereas I tend towards a more electronic and experimental palate.
Sea Oleena: Hmm, I think maybe I listen to more choral music than Luke does. Luke listens to more music, in general, than I do though. He explores more. We do make music separately, and in my music the difference comes across as less. Less of everything. This comes across pretty strongly in the live set, as I’ve been tending toward minimalism and open spaces. The songs I've been playing lately involve even more repetition and, in a way, focus; like finding a stone and instead searching for the perfect surface to place it upon, you just pick it up and look at it for a long time. Both ways of seeing offer their own insights, I'm just particularly drawn to the second lately.Do those differences come across in the remix?
L Ron: Which each subsequent Sea Oleena release, my contributions have become less and less obvious, which to me is true of any good producer. The first EP had a ton of clattery beats, a lot of bleeps and busyness as I was still figuring things out and was really excited to play with my sister and had a ton of ideas on how to help shape the songs. As time goes on and our respective voices become more clearer, our work together gets a lot more minimal - that is to say, I'm adding less, leaving the essential emotional core that is her voice and songwriting to carry the song. So on many tracks on Shallow I'm not really playing anything or adding anything extra, and all you're hearing is her voice, her instrument (either guitar or piano), and bass and violin from the Pats. I'm just working with what's already there - a bed of delay here, a flourish of strings there. Overwhelmingly my job was mainly just mixing and fitting everything together, layering, texturing. I still did the minimal percussion on the three tracks that called for it, and a bit of guitar now and then. Doing this remix was really fun and almost cathartic because it's just me letting loose on this track I'd already worked on, all the previous constraints thrown out the window. I preserved her lyrics and not much else.
Sea Oleena: [Laughs] The remix is really Luke's vision, him taking the song and kind of going crazy with it.Do you have any more L Ron material in the works? More remixes or original material?
L Ron: There's always a remix or two in the pipeline, I like to stay on my toes. Over the past year I've been compiling the debut L Ron album, which will be a mixture of ambient and rhythmic music, featuring about a dozen other local musicians. You'll be hearing something about that very soon.Greg Bouchard wants to get into music, but is waiting for a sibling to come along first - @gregorybouchard
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Noisey: How long have you and Charlotte worked on music together? I'm imagining family dinners with lots of singing and stuff.
L Ron: Our family was musical for sure, but mostly separately just playing on our own, taking lessons, etc. I’m sure we all sang together for a church function at some point. We have two other younger sisters who are equally musical and creatively driven so it was a busy house.
Sea Oleena: Around when I was almost out of high school, we started coming up with these super folky versions of Animal Collective songs, all harmonies and acoustic strumming. There was a tambourine involved at one point. We would record our versions and put them on YouTube. Very quirky beginnings.Where did you record Shallow? Did you do anything differently than previous Sea Oleena albums you've worked on together?
L Ron: There are some key differences in the making of Shallow compared to the first two releases. For one, it was the first time I was present for most of the recording so that allowed me to bring a lot more uniformity and cohesion to the overall sound. Some of her parts were done at her place but the majority of the record was recorded in my bedroom. We also had two other musicians contributing parts, both of them named Patrick. One on the double bass and one on violin. They helped write their respective parts—it was a very open and collaborative atmosphere, and at that point we were pretty much a band. Of course, she's back to playing solo now, which totally suits the project, but it was a nice couple months surrounding the making of the album where it became something more. We played a single show in that time period with all four of us present, at the Rialto for last year's POP Montreal.
Sea Oleena: For the old albums, our separate processes were just that: separate. I would shut myself in my room and write and record and then WeTransfer everything to Luke, who would then do basically the same thing: work on his own, sending me the works in progress every now and then. For Shallow, the collaboration was physical. For example, composing the string arrangements, for the most part, involved all four of us at once crowded into Luke's little bedroom, sharing ideas, trying out sounds, searching together. But collaboration in music is something I've found difficult to sustain, so Sea Oleena live means two important things: me on my own, and no songs from Shallow. I can't reproduce them on my own, not in the same way, and have no intention to.
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L Ron: Most of those nuanced textures tend to reveal themselves in the deep corners of the soundscape, the mass of sound generated by her voice and her guitar put through layers and layers of reverb. So it's never purposefully created, we'll just spot something nice early on in the mixing and bring it to the forefront. It just takes a patient ear.How would you say your music tastes differ? Luke, what would what do you add that wouldn't be there if you weren't producing? And Charlotte, vice versa?
L Ron: I think we're both very voracious consumers of music and art, and we're similar enough that there's a very good chance that what inspires one of us will also inspire the other. That said, I think she's explored the songwriter side of popular music much deeper than I, whereas I tend towards a more electronic and experimental palate.
Sea Oleena: Hmm, I think maybe I listen to more choral music than Luke does. Luke listens to more music, in general, than I do though. He explores more. We do make music separately, and in my music the difference comes across as less. Less of everything. This comes across pretty strongly in the live set, as I’ve been tending toward minimalism and open spaces. The songs I've been playing lately involve even more repetition and, in a way, focus; like finding a stone and instead searching for the perfect surface to place it upon, you just pick it up and look at it for a long time. Both ways of seeing offer their own insights, I'm just particularly drawn to the second lately.Do those differences come across in the remix?
L Ron: Which each subsequent Sea Oleena release, my contributions have become less and less obvious, which to me is true of any good producer. The first EP had a ton of clattery beats, a lot of bleeps and busyness as I was still figuring things out and was really excited to play with my sister and had a ton of ideas on how to help shape the songs. As time goes on and our respective voices become more clearer, our work together gets a lot more minimal - that is to say, I'm adding less, leaving the essential emotional core that is her voice and songwriting to carry the song. So on many tracks on Shallow I'm not really playing anything or adding anything extra, and all you're hearing is her voice, her instrument (either guitar or piano), and bass and violin from the Pats. I'm just working with what's already there - a bed of delay here, a flourish of strings there. Overwhelmingly my job was mainly just mixing and fitting everything together, layering, texturing. I still did the minimal percussion on the three tracks that called for it, and a bit of guitar now and then. Doing this remix was really fun and almost cathartic because it's just me letting loose on this track I'd already worked on, all the previous constraints thrown out the window. I preserved her lyrics and not much else.
Sea Oleena: [Laughs] The remix is really Luke's vision, him taking the song and kind of going crazy with it.Do you have any more L Ron material in the works? More remixes or original material?
L Ron: There's always a remix or two in the pipeline, I like to stay on my toes. Over the past year I've been compiling the debut L Ron album, which will be a mixture of ambient and rhythmic music, featuring about a dozen other local musicians. You'll be hearing something about that very soon.Greg Bouchard wants to get into music, but is waiting for a sibling to come along first - @gregorybouchard