Just before Christmas I had the chance catch up with both Harrison and Clayton of Odesza about their new album, touring the USA with our Hayden James and of course their upcoming Australian tour.
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Hey guys, how are you both?
We are doing well thanks. How are you?
I’m wonderful thank you for asking. Where are you guys at the moment?
We are back in Seattle right now. We have the holidays at home.
Do you miss home when you are on tour?
Yeah definitely, it takes its toll being away for so long. We have just done a 2 month run in the US and overseas, so coming back is really nice. We can take a break and breathe a little bit.
Well I hope it is a good holiday for you! Have you ever thought about making a Christmas album?
First off, you don’t want to hear us sing! We could do a ‘Christmas Remixes with Odesza’…I imagine that the album cover would be hilarious looking. Clay and I lounging by the fire, with Santa hats on [laughs]
Egg nog in hand.
Yeah, with rum!
Definitely with rum! So I know there are a few different stories as to where your name came from, and i thought we could come up with a few more together to keep the mystery alive, are you game?
I have one story that’s pretty decent.
Okay shoot!
Well ‘Odesla’ is Polish, it means “she’s gone”. So it could be like a nostalgic name.
Ooooo that’s deep! Well, I found an ‘Odessa’ brand of skate shoes, what do you think we could do with that?
I guess we could say we met at a skate park, tearing it up…and we were both wearing the same brand shoes…
Bonding over shoes, that’s good!
Yeah, and we just kind of went up to each other and said “Hey do you wanna start a band…with these shoes?” [laughs]
Ha ha love it!
So the new album is out and you also have a tour in Australia coming up that you’ve already had to start adding a couple of extra shows too. Did you expect it to go that well?
We were actually there a little while ago and the response was really good. We had no idea that people were going to like the tracks so much, but when you look at our twitter feed, a lot of it is from Australian’s reaching out. So we are very excited to come back. It’s funny because we put out ‘Memories That You Call’ right after we left, and that started to get some traction over there, and people were like “come back!” and we were like “we just left!” [laughs]
Have you ever experienced an Australian Summer before?
We came in the dead of Winter last time, so we’re excited to get some Australian heat.
It’s very hot, and very stormy here, so make sure you have some thongs, some 50 plus sunscreen, and a really good umbrella…
Deal, sounds like a wildly big contrast!
You’ll see… So with the incorporation of lyrics in the new album, do you feel like it changed the dynamics from your previous albums?
It changed how we went about writing allot of the songs and how they progressed. It definitely felt a little bit more traditional which was something we really wanted try because we come from such an instrumental beat-making world. We were a little bored and wanted to try new things. It was definitely an experiment and we learnt a ton from it. We are not 100 percent sure what we are going to do on the next album but I know we are definitely going to try and do some things we haven’t done before.
Do you see it evolving in a different way?
I don’t know how we are going to evolve just yet, but I think we will still stay true to some of the things we love about instrumental based songs. I think we will definitely still have people sing on our music. It’s just a fun thing for people to connect to, and it adds so much more meaning to songs.
Is there anyone in particular you are looking at collaborating with? Maybe while you are here?
We reached out to a couple of people, we are just at the beginning of the writing process so we have to make some new music before we start sending anything out, but we definitely have things in mind. When we are in Australia we are actually going to be hanging out with Hayden James, and hopefully we can get in the studio with him a little bit and lay down a track or something.
That would be amazing, we are big Hayden James fans. He was recently on tour with you in America wasn’t he?
Yeah! He spent a whole month with us in a van, so we got pretty close!
So is he really as nice as he seems?
He’s our best friend!
Any stories you want to share?
People thought he was me all the time at shows, which was funny.
That is pretty funny!
Well I think a lot of people think we are Australian.
Being Australian is not so bad!
It’s not a negative at all, it’s just really funny that people assume that! I’ll have a full conversation with someone in a very obviously American accent, and they are still like “oh so where abouts in Australia are you from?” and we are like “What??”
Maybe you’ve just got some of our Australian charm!
Ha ha yeah that must be it! [laughs]
Alright guys, thanks for chatting! We look forward to seeing you very soon!
Thanks a lot. Catch you later!
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Odesza‘s Australia & New Zealand tour kicks off next week and if you haven’t got your tickets by now, you may very well miss out on seeing them.
You can find all of the details here, so get onto it asap: https://www.facebook.com/Odesza/events
Supporting them along the way will be (as mentioned above) Hayden James, Samuel Truth, Charles Murdoch and cln, the young Brisbane producer responsible for this stunning remix of ‘Say My Name’
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