Penn State graduate releases ‘En Root’ with band Sea Offs

Rasmit Arora recently graduated from Penn State and has kept the music alive during these strange times.

Arora and his Sea Offs bandmate Olivia Price recently released “En Root,” an atmospheric, musically triumphant five-song EP now available on online platforms such as Spotify and Bandcamp.

The EP is the result of two years of collaborative songwriting, Arora wrote in an email.

“Olivia writes the core of most of the songs, and then I write most of the instrumentation for them,” Arora wrote.

Although Arora and Price are the center of the Sea Offs, they also worked with Spencer Inch on drums and Kyle Joseph on bass for this album.

“Kyle produced this album, too, and so played a huge role in molding its sound,” Arora wrote.

The EP begins with “Somehow,” a contemplative, finger-style guitar riff that is joined by an electric guitar feedback-laden swell that simply rolls out the carpet for Price’s singing, which begins with the lyrics, “Stare at the ceiling/Paint a corridor/Buried in thinking/Sinking to the floor/Living with intention/Of making my way out.” The second song, “To Find your Song,” begins in a similar way, minus the electric, feedback-laden swell, and the song shuffles along with the help of Joseph’s drums. It’s a deliberate unraveling of layers of sound, with vocal harmonies and a harmonious blend of the vocals and the instrumentation.

The remaining songs, “For Familiarity’s Sake,” “Will (You)” and “Fight Song” follow suit while offering a ceaseless array of new musical ideas, with the final lyrics stating “We can go back to/The place we tried to regret less/Of what we done that night,” an acoustic, kind of country blues inspired prayer. It’s a brilliant way to end the album because it’s a parting message of hope. We can always revisit the things that haunt us, or even more specifically we can revisit the states of mind that were the most healthy for us, as long as we simply intend to do so in our pursuit the greatest good and our highest selves.

It’s the way of the EP. The songs start with very little, just steady guitar riffs that lead to vocals, which then lead to a celebratory confluence of sounds and harmonic revelations. By the end of the songs the energy is intense, even complex, revealing Arora and Price’s ear for composition. More than once, listening to the songs was like listening to a movement — or perhaps many movements — of music that builds and expands and is an audio montage of the process of creation, of what it means to live in a way where there is some kind of superficial energy block, but also where Arora and Price’s immense hearts are fully healthy, fully alive, and fully exposed for the listener to experience.

“We hope it brings people some calm in these turbulent times,” Arora wrote.

The Sea Offs are a recording band right now, and with the release of “En Root” they now have a substantial collection of superbly composed music that, although it is concise on the albums, could easily open up in a live setting and carry crowds through a significant live listening experience.

“We’re not a big touring band,” Arora wrote, “we play only a handful of shows every year. So it’s mostly been through online media that we’ve been able to reach people around the globe.”

The Sea Offs are catching on, too.

“Our biggest point of pride is when someone thousands of miles away, from a different land, a different culture, reaches out to us and tells us that our music is helping them get through something,” Arora wrote. “We hope that continues.”

In the future, the Sea Offs intend to continue making music, even if it’s by doing so remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic or geographic variables that make things a bit challenging.

“We both have multiple music projects, as well as non-music projects going on simultaneously,” Arora wrote. “But, we still think what we do with Sea Offs is unique, and so we find value in getting together every now and then to write some tunes. We make music mostly remotely, when we can. Although the pandemic is definitely making things hazier now.”