Ocean Ocean was busy this summer. He was cutting and folding, peeling, sticking and stacking, post-producing and putting together four new CDs from Ocean & Casas, of whom, he is the Ocean: lead guitar. The Casas is Evan Casas: drummer.
Starting from happy places inspired by joyful moments in their lives, Ocean & Casas have written and recorded hundreds of danceable, sing-alongable songs, which are now available for consumption in the convenient form of the compact disc.
In an interview at their apartment-cum-recording studio, the band described their history, their process, their achievements and their plans.
The songs that Ocean & Casas create vary from bare bones acoustic roots-rock to electronica. Ocean says that he draws stylistically from jazz, blues and pop music. “We don’t limit ourselves in the creative process. We both listen to music all day. We study music.” He said. The influences of jangling Americana, ghetto reggae, and Seasame Street-esque jingles are evident in their music. “When constructing a song, an idea usually just pops into my head in the form of melodious lyrics and then I play it on my guitar.” He described the time that he was searching for a pair of fingernail clippers and singing about it, melodically. Ocean organizes his words into poems with disarmingly simple rhyme schemes, sometimes rhyming a word with itself to achieve a sort of deliberate redundancy. In the song “Plastic Dinosaurs,” which was the first song Ocean & Casas wrote together in grade school, Ocean rhymes dead with head, head, head and red. Casas sings backup vocals to punctuate the duplication. Their lyrics can also be exceptionally clever, as in the song, “Queen You.” Ocean sings, “What’s the dif-fer-ence be-tween a real girl and a queen? Can’t please a queen. She won’t go that low. Even though she wants to though.” Ocean’s vocals range from mellow crooning to angry bursts of spitting. The vocals compliment the boldness and confidence of his guitar playing.
When contributing to a song, Casas listens to the guitar parts and adds drum pieces accordingly. He says, “Space is the most important aspect in the drum parts.”
It is apparent while talking to Ocean & Casas that there is a significant depth to their musical and personal relationship. They launch into humorous tangential conversations that seem prearranged. Asked if he could explain this unity in words, Casas said, “We get up at 4 a.m. and write the script of our day.” Ocean said, “Everything we say is scripted. Sometimes we improvise, but even that is scripted.” Ocean and Casas have known each other since they were in second grade. They took the bus together to their Washington, Maine elementary school. “We started making recordings in a barn, using shitty microphones and tape recorders that made everything sound muffled.” Their mid-coast Maine upbringing is reflected in their truck-driving flower-child outlook on the world. They frequently explode into rants while imitating the vocal mannerisms of your common Mainer. Between slugs of PBR, Ocean told me that he is a vegetarian who often sits under trees, listening to their voices. Casas works as a concrete laborer, eats meat and spends a lot of time worrying about the technical aspects of the music. “Ocean has to tell me that ‘everything is OK’ a lot,” Casas said.
The Ocean & Casas albums each have a unique sound. “The songs are written about an assortment of feelings and arranged in a way that achieves balance. Each album is an interesting ride for the listener” Ocean said. “I want to make people happy,” Casas said.
Ocean & Casas record their songs on a Fostex Digital 8-track with cheap microphones and master them on an Apple laptop. The CD’s are burned on a CD burner designed by Porsche so it’s wicked fast. The Ocean & Casas albums, “Sea Jouney,” “Universal Waste,” “Satellite Accumlation Storage Area,” “Yes These are Songs,” and “The EP,” are available for purchase at Bull Moose Music in Portland. Ocean & Casas have plans to produce a few more albums in the next year. Witness them live at the Space Gallery on September 30.