AN INTERVIEW WITH OCEANATOR
Elise Okusami is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist who performs solo under the moniker Oceanator. Okusami recently released her debut album, Things I Never Said. Things I Never Said is ultimately a record about finding comfort in the face of destruction, whether it be through appreciating the little things or forming a bond with someone you can mutually confide in about mental afflictions. Okusami talks to Teresa and Sam about the apocalyptic feel of Things I Never Said, the album's colorful palette, and her favorite running playlist.
Sam: A lot of this album feels a bit apocalyptic. I know you said that you recorded it before the whole quarantine period, but did you feel like you kind of predicted the future in a way?
Oceanator: Fun answer, yes, I’m psychic. But also, I think a lot of that apocalyptic stuff - this year is particularly bad, for sure, everything kind of feels like it’s coming together - but every year there’s like a lot of stuff going on. I think it all gets up in your head, in the collective consciousness of folks. So you’re thinking about, “here’s all this bad stuff that’s going on,” and still trying to live your day.
When I sat down to write [the album], that’s the stuff that’s coming out. It’s all there. It’s not like we got to 2020 and everything was perfect before and now it’s suddenly terrible. It’s kind of been building up to it. So, I think that’s part of why the songs feel like they’re… I think there’s a bunch of records that came out this year that are like that too, which is pretty wild.
Teresa: Kind of going off that, did you plan for this album to have a lot of apocalyptic themes, or did you just notice that that was something you were writing about, and that was just something that always came up?
Oceanator: Yeah, it was just something that came up. I usually write albums - well, this is the first Oceanator album, but like I write the EPs and stuff - what I do is I just write a bunch of songs. I’m not thinking in terms of “okay, now it’s time to finish an album.” I’ll just be writing a bunch and then when I have a bunch of songs that I like, that’s when I start thinking about “what is this gonna be? Is it gonna be an EP, is it gonna be an album? Which songs from these fit on it?”
So with this one, it was, like, I think I had 13 I was thinking about putting together. As I listened to them, sonically and also lyrically, thematically, I was like, “Oh, I guess all of these are about a similar feeling. They make sense together, so this will be the record.”
Sam: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Going back to those EPs, I really loved the “Tear These Fascists Down” EP. It was a bunch of beautiful covers. But did the recent election, do you feel like it affirmed a lot of the feelings that you were trying to get across on that EP, or do you feel like there’s still a lot of work to do?
Oceanator: I think there’s definitely still a lot of work to do, for sure. This is good. You know, I’m not a big Biden fan, but I think he’s definitely better than the alternative and all the work that needs to be done will be… Hopefully, he’ll have a better pandemic response, for example, so like all these extra people won’t have to die over something that we could be taking steps and precautions for.
So I think it’s definitely a step in the good direction. It’s really frustrating to see all the established Democrats be like, “progressives, you almost cost us the vote!” Which is just so ridiculous. Yes, there’s lots of work to be done, but I’m feeling optimistic. Long story short.
Sam: I noticed that you kind of cover a variety of different musical influences, like with soul and with some punk rock, on your EPs. What artist really influenced you in the work that you do now?
Oceanator: Growing up, listening to formative artists, I’d say are Green Day, Elliot Smith. Those are my two big, big ones. And then, I love Jeff Rosenstock, I love [Unintelligible], Wolf Parade, and, um, then soul stuff like Curtis Mayfield, that first Curtis Mayfield record, Curtis! was just, like, so good.
I mean my dad, and my mom also, listened to a lot of soul stuff growing up. He’s a big speaker guy, also, so he had the sound system going all day basically, with just soul and old rock and stuff. And then my mom was into more like - [she] listened to the oldies station, and then she liked folk and stuff. I went to some folk festivals with her as a kid and I saw Pete Seager and Arlo Guthrie when I was really small, and I’ve seen Arlo Guthrie a bunch since then - I think he’s great.
I think all that stuff, a lot of that’s in there, you know, unconsciously. So when people ask me my influence, I don’t usually say those folks, cause I’m not listening to them as much these days, actively. But they’re in there, and they definitely formed my musical education.
Teresa: First of all, I love Elliot Smith. I found Elliot Smith when I was going through my emo days in middle school, and I have a playlist on Spotify that’s just like “Cry” and it’s just all my - *Laughs*
Oceanator: *Laughs* Talking about him with someone this morning too, they sent me their playlists and they were like, “Oh what are your favorite Elliot Smith songs?” And I was like, “Well, off the top of my head,” and sent back like twenty songs like an idiot.
Teresa: Yeah. Elliot Smith is when you’re in the dark place, you’re like, “Oh…” That’s where you are.
Oceanator: It’s good, though. One of the things I like about his music and also other sad music is when you are in the dark place, it makes you feel better. For me, at least. It’s like, “Oh, I’m not alone here.” And when I’m not in the dark place, I can still listen to it because I’m like, “It’s so good!” It’s just really well-written songs.
Teresa: Yeah, I don't know how seventh grade me was like, “I can relate.” A little problematic - *Laughs*
Oceanator: Yeah! You listen to the sad music when you’re little, and it’s like, “Yeah, I’m big sad too!” And then you get older and you’re like, “I dunno what you were sad about little me. But yikes.”
Teresa: No, totally. Kind of going off of your influences - obviously, I know that you do the songwriting and the arranging of your music - so which one of these came first in your artistic path? Arranging music or really more lyrical stuff? And also, which one of these two comes more naturally to you, if at all?
Oceanator: They… kind of came together, in terms of coming first. When I started writing songs as a kid, it was very much - when I started writing songs, it was like rock songs. Songs for a band, so music and lyrics [were] kind of together. So, I started doing them together.
But what comes more naturally for me is definitely the musical part, writing the instruments and the parts and arranging them and stuff. I almost always finish a song, music-wise, arrangement and structure [are done] before the lyrics are done or sometimes even started. And then that kind of influences the lyric writing for me.
[Lyric writing's] definitely the harder part for me, and I think part of it is because I’m very self conscious, so I always worry about what I’m saying and just that people are gonna hear my thoughts and that kind of weirds me out a little bit, and I always think everything I write is stupid. But also, yeah, I just think musically more, maybe. That’s definitely the more natural sort of thing for me.
I’ll usually have voice memos and Garage Band demos and other things just floating around all the time, musically, that will probably never be anything. Sometimes I’ll come back to it, and some lyrics will kind of jump out or like a phrase will jump out at me while I’m just strumming along, and then I kind of write a song about that.
Sam: Do you ever feel like you’re creating a balance between the lyrics and the instrumentation? Cause the first couple of songs I heard, like “Crack in the World”, it was my running song and I was like, “Oh, this is so hype!” Then I started listening to the lyrics and I was like, damn. *Laughs*
Oceanator: *Laughs*
Sam: Do you intentionally strike that balance, or is that a balance you’re looking for?
Oceanator: I’m not intentionally trying to be like, a hype fast fun song—let’s bring it down a notch and just be scared, you know. I dunno, that song - in general, with the songs, they kind of give me a feeling, and then that feeling is what I write the lyrics around. So I guess, maybe in some way, it’s kind of like a balance that I’m trying to strike. But I’m not thinking like, happy sounding song, sad sounding lyrics. Sad sounding song, happy sounding… You know, I’m not trying to do that. But it does happen like that, sometimes.
Also, I guess most of my lyrics are kind of about being anxious anyway. I think there’s gonna be a lot of, but I like to - especially, recently I’ve been writing a lot of stuff in a major key, and kind of fast and upbeat stuff but lyrically the same, sort of. Anxieties are there. I guess that’s a long, rambling answer to that.
Teresa: One of my favorite lyrics, or a lyric that I really thought about was on a “Crack in the World”. You said, “Who knows if we’ll be here tomorrow, but everything, everything still matters.” Cause I feel like usually the conclusion is like, “Who knows if we’ll be here tomorrow, nothing matters.” So was there a specific experience that led you to this conclusion, that everything matters even if we don’t know if we’ll be here tomorrow? What prompted this thought pattern?
Oceanator: So there’s this book called “Everything Matters” by Ron Currie Jr. that is about [a] guy who knows exactly when and how the world is gonna end, and he’s known since he was born. And then he leads this life, and the thesis of the book is, like if you know when the world’s gonna end does anything you do really matter? And, spoiler alert, yes.
I think I got that book at the exact right time in my brain, because I was thinking about these things too. What does this matter, blah blah, everything’s terrible and etcetera, etcetera. It’s kind of like, the fact that the world, specifically with this lyric, the fact that who knows if we’ll be here tomorrow - literally, we could die tomorrow - so every little thing we do now matters cause we only have this little bit of time, unknown amount of time to be here and do stuff. So might as well do that well, you know, and make the best of it and try to enjoy it while we can.
That’s what makes it matter. In the grand scheme of things, in the future, will your one little life matter to people or aliens or whatever in a thousand years? No, they’re not gonna know who you are. But your experiences and your interactions with other people and the impact you leave on your immediate world is still important and matters to you and probably a couple other people at least.
Sam: Definitely. And maybe we’ll find the aliens do study us, you never know.
Oceanator: Yeah!
Sam: How has your recording process lately been? I know that the album was recorded a while ago. How has it been recording over quarantine?
Oceanator: It’s been okay… I’m very lucky in that my brother has a studio that he built in the basement, and we’ve been recording together and playing together since we were really small. We started a band when I was nine and he was seven, or eight and six, and then he started learning to record shortly after that. So he’s actually who mixed this new record, and half of it was recorded with him there, as well.
The stuff I’ve been doing, I’ve done a couple covers and stuff like that. I’ve been able to go down there, I’ve gone down [to the studio] a couple times to help him with stuff and help my dad with some stuff, and while I’m there, I can record cause he’s got the studio and he’s got all the equipment. That aspect of it hasn’t really changed because of quarantine. Because there are a few songs on the record that I play all the instruments on, anyway, so that’s something I’ve been used to doing.
But I’m working on some new stuff, and it is a little bit - it’s kind of a bummer that I can’t get into a room with other people. Cause one of the things I liked doing when I have a new song is just, like, even if I’ve already written all the parts, you know, I like to hear it performed. So I’ll go in, we’ll be practicing for a show, and I’ll be like, “I have this new song, here’s the key and the changes. Just kind of play something similar to this just so I can get a feel of how it sounds and how it feels to play it.” Even if they’re not playing exactly what I’m planning on it sounding like.
So it’s been a different experience, not being able to hear the sound played loud all together as opposed to just me tracking it into the computer. But yeah, it’s very nice to have that space. And I’ve been working on kind of figuring out doing it in my apartment, also. I have the microphone that wasn’t working, and I have my keyboard over here and stuff. Been doing some demos and learning how to do that stuff a little more.
Teresa: One of the things that I love, just about albums, are the album covers. And so, I just want to know what outfit are you wearing, what is the significance of this album, where’s the chair coming from, the look on your face. Even though it’s simple, everything in it seems very intentionally placed and submitted. Could you just tell us a little bit about why this album cover?
Oceanator: Yeah. When I was putting the songs together, once I knew these were the nine songs - or I think I maybe had eight and then I wrote, “January 21st” was the last one that got written, actually - when I was very close to having [the record], I just had this vision in my head of the cover being like the chair in the bottom right corner and it being a teal background and there being some orange in the chair and sitting cross legged. And I [saw it], and I was like, “Oh, it’s such an extremely strong vision, I guess it has to be the album cover.”
So then I hit up Mary Streepy, who did the drawing, and I sent her a photo of me - I sent her several photos of me sitting like that in various chairs - so she put it, she did the final. It’s not a real chair that she kinda mixed everything together and made it look perfect. And yeah, the outfit [is] jeans and a t-shirt. Because this is what I look like most days, and that’s what I wear.
Yeah, [the expression was] just kinda a neutral face because I kinda just felt like it should be just staring at you. And then [Streepy] really, I think, nailed it on the execution. And then Carl did the layout with the colors and the title going up the side like that and everything, just pulling it all together.
Sam: Definitely. I actually just ordered one of the shirts today with the cover on it, so I’m super excited.
Oceanator: Oh, that was you! I was gonna mail that out after this. Cool, I’ll throw in some plexis or something too.
Sam: But, one other thing I wondered, what are you most proud of in this album? What do you feel like really worked the best for you?
Oceanator: I’m very proud of how it feels for me, and it seems like, a lot of other people, which is cool, like a cohesive thing. I think it’s my most cohesive thing that I’ve made so far. Like the first EPs, the Self-Titled and the Lowes EP, I think they fit and they have this flow, but this one I kind of see it as this and… I’m really happy with how that came together.
And I really like all the songs. They’re really fun to play, and it was very cool to get to do the full band live stream for the album release that we did. And with Andrew and Tony, who’ve been my touring band for the past year, I guess I should say two years - but we didn’t tour this year, obviously. But they’re super fun to play with, and we really jive well together. So yeah, I’m just stoked - I’m just really pleased to have made a record that I feel good about.
I feel like this record came out how I wanted it to come out, and there’s no part of it where I’m like, “Ugh, should’ve done this here.” I’m happy with the finished thing.
Teresa: So what, if anything, did you want listeners to take away from this project? Either album wise or just about you as an artist?
Oceanator: Well, album wise, I would like people to come away from listening to it - I guess, overall, feeling hopeful. Like they can, even if things are terrible - which they are, but there’s still some - that’s why I put “Sunshine” last too. It’s like we just came through this whole experience of ups and downs and whatever, and like the overall message is we’re gonna be okay, even if we’re not okay.
As an artist… I don’t know. I just love making music and playing music, so I hope that that translates and that people are enjoying it. It’s been such a huge part of my life, like listening to music and going to see other play and stuff, and people’s songs have really gotten me through a lot of stuff. So if someone’s going through something, I hope to be also giving that back - all the good I got out from bands, I hope my music is helping someone, and that people are enjoying it.