SEIMS: To Soundtrack A Conversation

Without words, we’re nothing. We use them every single day, whether they’re tapped out on our phones or spoken out loud. Conversations become our currency as we carve out our own identities. Nothing can come close to expressing our every emotion, and the way others understand us, like words. Or so we think. On his latest expedition through sound, multi-instrumentalist Simeon Bartholomew – better known as SEIMS – explores the nuances of language and the way we interpret it. And if that wasn’t enough, save for a song or two, he does it without any words at all.

“Communication feels like such a literal concept, like communication means words, but if you strip it back to its core idea, it’s all about the context, situation and nuance,” Simeon explains on the other side of the world, hiding out in his home studio in Australia. “It’s all the things that have nothing to do with the words coming out of your mouth but the situation around you, or the emotions that are embodied or the moments that proceed or will succeed. So that was my personal challenge – how do you bring these voices to life?”

It’s a question that permeates SEIMS’ latest album, FOUR. Whether it’s Stranger Things-inspired synths, orchestral strings, or traditional jazz drumming; everything collides in an aural conversation. Every instrument is its own character, every movement is a sentence. And on their rare appearances, vocals avoid being literal, contributing to the concept of interpretation. “When it comes to the idea of conversation or communication, how do we make that abstract? I wanted to tell the same story without making it like ‘my girlfriend left me and I miss her therefore I’m sad’ because no one likes a song with lyrics like that, do they?” Simeon laughs. “There’s no mystery, they’re just shit. It’s like I hate that song I Miss You by INCUBUS, I loved the Make Yourself album so much that I intentionally scratched the CD at ‘I Miss You’ – I literally went and found where it sat on the disk.”

Whether you’re a fan of mid-nineties alt-rock love songs or not, it’s not hard to hear the point. When the vocals of The Mountain Screams shriek like the cavernous mountain it manifests, it’s up to you to interpret its true meaning. “It’s so obvious and so basic, so I had the personal challenge of taking what could be a literal concept and turning it into an abstract one in a way that uses the literal medium it’s talking about.”

The concept comes from Simeon’s everyday experiences. As a creative director in his day job, he found himself taken away from the doldrums of a training course by the concept of the Myer Briggs Personality Indicator. “As part of the job, they send you on these fucking leadership courses about learning your strengths and all that crap” he deadpans, smirking subtly. “A lot of them are wasting time, but one was really interesting. They work out what your strengths and weaknesses are, but rather than worrying about the ones you’re shit at, just think about the ones you’re good at and how you can heighten those, but in a way that makes people aware that’s how you communicate which will help them perceive you, and instantly, I was like ‘that’s such an interesting way to look at how we communicate?”

Taking his new found knowledge into the workplace, Simeon found himself digging down a rabbit-hole, as FOUR’s concept spiralled. As COVID-19 took hold of the world, and his office conversations became zoom calls, the album began to take shape as he really explored the nuances of language. “With Zoom, it had me thinking, no matter what I do to converse my intent or my emotion, a lot of that’s not controlled by me, it’s controlled by the recipient. So how do you take those devices and turn them on the receivers, and that was the big ‘aha’ moment. My life is in Zoom meetings back to back, so you don’t get those little moments talking shit and grabbing coffee, you just don’t get those contextual moments where we’re connecting, so it’s really sad because you don’t have that context of the person and what they’re receiving.” It’s a pattern of thought that consumed Simeon so much that it practically derailed his plans for SEIMS, even more so than a global pandemic did.

Originally, the plan was to piggyback off of 2017’s 3’s exploration of the CMYK colour model, as Simeon explains. “I loved exploring how light comes into play and how that affects the colours, so Initially the idea was to counter it all with RGB. It was going to be three 20-minute songs – Red, Green and Blue – going wall to wall with everything else.”

Of course, life took a turn and Simeon found himself all-consumed with new concepts about conversations, and suddenly it all shifted. “It’s not that I got tired of it, but I had this idea of conversations in my brain, like it was always in the back of my head, and then I wrote The Pursuit Of Intermediate Happiness and suddenly it all made sense, it was like ‘Oh, so that’s how this album comes to life.’ The RGB idea is still there, but maybe by the time I get around to it, I might be past it because it feels weird to revert to a theme from four years ago, it should stay where it stays – that’s that story, that’s that character, that’s that motive.”

In many ways, it’s a miracle SIEMS pushed forward with FOUR. Simply put, it’s a masterclass in making every moment matter. There’s no way you can label it’s soundscapes, you simply have to experience it’s worldbuilding. At times it’s complex, at other’s it’s simple. Take Elegance Over Confidence, a track that see’s classical piano and jazz drums dip under and over each other, competing in the mix like two tones of voices in a conversation. As much as it does what it says on the tin, it’s also Simeon’s way of taking on his math-rock peers.

“That’s my middle finger to the rest of the math rock genre, because people get married to the complication of math rock, and I hate that” he explains, bemused at the elitism plaguing this musical playground. “It’s just everyone going ‘I can be this complex’ and it’s like, sure, I can do that, but it’s not the intention, the intention is to actually convey an idea or a message – I still try to make it danceable and memorable as opposed to just playing some bullshit crazy riff.”

In many ways, Simeon’s take on math-rock’s elitism feeds into the concepts that make FOUR the album it is. There’s misconceptions and misinterpretations of the way people make and understand music, and that’s the irony of it all. In fact, it’s pulling apart from those conversations that has helped mould the sound SEIMS has shifted into. “I feel like I don’t need to tell people musically, like I don’t need to show how good I am, I don’t need to just shred for forty minutes – that was me at 19 years old, that part of my life is done. It’s the story and the narrative and how these characters come together and the journey that they take that matters, that’s the composition right? Otherwise, you’re just following the hero the entire time and that’s a pretty fucking boring film, you may as well just watch a Zack Snyder film.”

There’s confidence in every word Simeon, and by extension SEIMS, speaks – whether that’s figuratively or literally. Of course, it hasn’t always come with conviction, as Simeon sees it as important to state just how much of his time is spent wondering if he’s even mustered up some magic, as he explains, “I genuinely have no idea if people are going to like it or not. I genuinely get to the end and I don’t even know if I like it or not, but I know what it should be, I just don’t know if I enjoy it because I’m still in the process of it – and then my poor wife has to hear me write everything, the poor thing has to walk past and hear me writing stupid riffs and every time she’s like ‘wow, that’s good’ and I’m like, is it? Because I don’t know, I genuinely don’t anymore.”

Regardless of Simeon’s imposter syndrome seeping in or not, it’s clear to the human ear that FOUR is as close to putting the Myer Briggs Personality Indicator into sound. And if the aim of SEIMS is to tell a story full of nuances, then they’ve well and truly achieved that.

FOUR is out now via Art As Catharsis Records, Bird’s Robe Records & Dunk Records.

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