The Seshen Finds Release on Nowhere
Photo Credit: Ginger Fierstein
On the opening track of The Seshen’s new album Nowhere, vocalist Lalin St. Juste sings into an echo chamber. Her words flow out into the air, slowly filling up space. Though we first encounter the sound of synth pads, with percussion following shortly after, it’s St. Juste’s vocals that pull us in. The album’s production keeps us still, admiring the genre shifts and shapes the music takes throughout.
The six-piece band out of Oakland, California is St. Juste, Akiyoshi Ehara, Mahesh Rao, Kumar Butler, Mirza Kopelman, and Chris Thalmann. Though the group has gone through minor lineup changes since the beginning, the group has remained close. Two of the founding members, St. Juste and Ehara were married, then divorced. Nowhere is the band’s first album since the couple’s split.
The pair found themselves naturally turning toward music after their separation. “Songwriting is how I process my emotions and the world around me. It is absolutely cathartic and ’Nowhere’ is no different,” she comments on the opening track. “It reflects a feeling of being lost inside of grief. It’s the title track because we felt that encapsulated the experience we went through.”
Acting as the album’s producer, Ehara also turned to sound. He explains, “There was a [lot] of music on this record that seemed to flow out of me because I was turning to music as the one place that still made sense.” Ehara expounds, “When life gets difficult, we tend to turn to the small areas in which we have some control. Music was that place for me. A lot of these songs started as snippets that I would throw into a folder to share with the band. In the early pandemic, Lalin and I would send ideas back and forth and work from there.”
The result is a deeply personal album that touches on the couple’s time together and the unraveling of their relationship. On the electronic-tinged “Hold Me,” St. Juste gets reflective, singing “We are the past/We are the beginning.” The song “Waiting for Dawn,” is St. Juste taking a bird’s eye view, looking at life as a work in progress. On the slow R&B jam “Watching the Rain,” she explores the idea of being stripped of a previous self, as her voice sings with uncertainty about what’s to come. Ending a relationship comes with sorrow and doubt. It also brings with it a sense of self-discovery. Those feelings are conveyed across the release.
The lyrics on Nowhere are written as confessionals, with the music underlining their mood. At times, the sonic landscape provides breathing room for St. Juste to express her emotions vocally. On songs like “Waiting for Dawn” and “Gone Under” her voice is doubled at a lower pitch, as if she’s submerged in heartbreak. While putting the record together, Ehara felt a deep connection with an approach used in Japanese photography, pivoting its influence to shape the sounds. “I was really into the concept of are-bure-boke. Are‑Bure‑Boke is a Japanese term, used to describe a style of photography that became increasingly popular in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Ehara explains. “I was really into the work of Daido Moriyama. Are‑Bure‑Boke means rough, blurred and out-of-focus. I wanted the music to reflect a sense of movement, imperfection and instability, because that was how life was feeling at that time. Things felt very unclear at the time and I think many of the textures on this record reflect that with unstable pitches, noise, and sounds that move in and out of the foreground.”
“The biggest challenge was just dealing with the emotions that came up while working on it,” Ehara comments on the production. “From a musical and production side there weren’t any major challenges. It was honestly just a lot of fun to follow my instincts and chase down sounds,” he explains. “I did take a different approach on this record which I think was beneficial. In the past, I’d listen to songs a lot before they were finished. This time around, if I wasn’t actively working on a song, I’d just put it away in order to come back to it with a fresher perspective–more like an outside listener.”
As the band’s previous releases, Nowhere is not built around one specific genre. The band effortlessly moves between electronic, R&B and indie rock, sometimes blending all three on the same track. “As a band, I think we’re continuing to chisel away at our sound and finding a bit more of a cohesive sound,” Ehara says. “As a producer, I wanted the whole record to emphasize flow a bit more than big peak and valleys. I really wanted the whole album to feel like its own world.”
The Seshen, named after the Egyptian blue lotus flower, has been a unit for over ten years. The band’s ability to create music that blends a unique sound and introspective lyrics is preeminent. As St. Juste comments, “We realized early on something was special. I don’t have a specific memory, but more so a feeling; being front of a crowd early on in our career and seeing how folks were responding to the music and singing along…I felt not only the bond between the people I was [with] onstage but I could also see how this bond was expanding beyond us and creating a world of connection.”
Nowhere is proof that the group’s bond is stronger than ever. “We’re an intimate group of people who have spent years together. Not only through music but in other areas of our lives,” St. Juste explains. “We are a family and the difficulty Aki and I went through was felt by everyone. There’s a great deal of trust and support within the group and everyone was willing to go wherever we wanted to go.” To move together in unison, through a fragile situation like this, requires a certain type of connection that doesn’t break easily. That energy is well-documented on the album.
Being a band for as long as they have is, in itself, no small feat. “It’s a wild ride being an independent musician,” St. Juste says of their accomplishments. “Success looks different at different times. Ultimately, my success stems from my sense of artistry. Am I growing? Am I trying new things? Am I challenging myself? Celebrating? Am I building community and supporting other artists?” she asks. “I can’t be attached to too much of the external forces. It’s all too fleeting. What I can be attached to is the fact that I’m being my most vulnerable, creative self and that, in turn, is impacting someone else’s experience in this world.”
The strength revealed by the band on Nowhere is unbreakable. The love that they share for each other, through good times and bad, reflects back at us.
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