Interview With ODESZA

Recently caught up with Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight of ODESZA. We talk about their go-to gear, approach to remixing and the art of skipping the manual.

ODESZA’s Music To Refine To: A Remix Companion to Severance is out now, a 23-minute-long remix of Theodore Shapiro’s score for the hit Apple TV series, Severance. Link.

Music To Refine To: A Remix Companion to Severance.

ODESZA's studio.

Synth History: Can you tell me about when you guys first met and what led to making music together?

Harrison Mills: I met Clay through our mutual friend, Sean Kusanagi, who still works with us to this day. He went to high school with Clay and he lived above me in the dorms at college. We ended up talking a little bit, and he found out I made music. Clay was also making music, both in our dorm rooms or in our houses. He basically match-made us, “You both make cool music, you should hang out.”

I think we talked about doing that for so long, but it never really happened. Then I happened to be visiting Sean at his house–they lived together at the time, this was the next year–and me and Clay just started talking about music. It was kind of a really fast chemistry. We were both making similar music, inspired by the same people, bonding over Four Tet and Animal Collective and all these things we really loved.

Originally, we were going to both make an album of Beach Boys remixes, but we ended up hanging out one day and made like three songs the first time we jammed together. It just felt like, “Oh, this is special.” We just decided right when we both graduated that we were going to try to spend the summer making an album. And that’s kind of where it all started.

Synth History: I read that you went to college for physics and mathematics? Do you find inspiration from either of those subjects for your music, visually or otherwise?

Clayton Knight: I think there's definitely a subconscious kind of connection to it. The physics and math background definitely helps with some of the gear stuff. You can learn a lot, but you gotta figure it out on your own a lot of the time. That was kind of the attitude in a lot of the classes I took, so that really helped.

More of the nerdy, musicality side definitely blends into that world. But a lot of it—especially in an art form like this—is feel-based. You can get into the minutiae of mixing and getting everything really balanced, using gear and hardware and all that to find a good sound, but the real heart of it is feel.

If you get too analytical, it can take away from that. So I try to remove that part of my brain during the writing process. For sound design, you can get nerdy with it, but we try to keep it pretty feel-based from the beginning.

Synth History: What DAW do you guys use to make music?

Harrison Mills: We use Ableton. I started on Reason and I think Clay was using Logic. When we met, we started using Logic together, and now we've shifted to Ableton mainly because of our live shows.

Synth History: Oh, nice! So you use it live too.

Clayton Knight: Yep. We used a lot of Native Instruments stuff for a long time—we’ve eased off a bit—but Maschine was a great idea generator. Kind of that MPC makeup. You get raw chops, feel, stuff that’s not super on the grid, which gives it more of a human element.

As we got more into the DAW, you lose some of that. Just lining stuff up with a mouse isn’t the same as pressing buttons and hitting gear.

We've tried a lot of different things over the years. Ableton is definitely one of the stronger pieces of software. It's impressive what you can do with it. The kids are going crazy.

Synth History: The kids are going crazy!

Harrison Mills: That’s your quote. That’s the headline right there.

Synth History: [laughs] Do you guys have any go-to plugins or hardware synths?

Harrison Mills: We use a lot of hardware synths. The OB-6, Deckard’s Dream, a Minilogue, an UDO Super 6.

Clayton Knight: The Moog Matriarch’s been used.

Harrison Mills: Those are probably the staples. We have a couple little guys, and we use a Novation Peak, too. The Peak is a big one.

As far as plugins, we use a lot of different saturators. We try to get the best sound out of the gear or the plugin itself.

We really like Gem Dopamine. It’s a great kind of saturator/air creator. It does something to the top end that helps push a lot of stuff. Like, you can use an OTT on a piece of gear, but that adds too much noise and kind of takes away the low end. Dopamine does it in a way that feels more natural, almost like Sie-Q by Native Instruments.

Clayton Knight: And yeah, the Soundtoys stuff, we grew up on that. We use a lot of Decapitator, Devil-Loc, stuff like that. That was a big part of our sound.

Also some of the Moog plugin stuff is really nice, and FabFilter is always incredible. We’ve also been messing with some experimental ones that do a lot of processing really fast, kind of like Stutter Edit. Those are fun for chopping up audio and musical elements. We’ve used Diva a lot for software synths. But our bread and butter is still hardware.

We like to layer them. An analog bass under a synth line and a digital top end to give it a modern edge. Finding that balance is something we spend a lot of time trying to get right.

Synth History: Your live performance is very cool. Visually, there seems to be an attention to detail. How important are visuals for accompanying your music?

Harrison Mills: I think we’ve always felt akin to visuals, mainly because we were so influenced by film soundtracks and scores. That really influences our show. We try to make it this big, interactive experience. We often think visually first, then accompany the music.

We’ll start with the musical idea for the show, then we’ll talk to different visual artists and tailor things based on what people are going to see. We love creating surprise, depth, tension… all the stuff you'd find in a film score. It's definitely top of mind when working on our live show.

Clayton Knight: And Harrison's design background feeds into that a lot.

Our main visual guy, Luke, has been with us forever and does an incredible job interpreting the music into visual formats. He has his own take, listens to music and sees things others might not, and creates these amazing visual narratives. We owe a lot to him for the live stuff.

Synth History: So I have to talk about your collaboration with Severance—The Music to Refine To EP. How did that come about? It’s so cool!

Clayton Knight: Apple kind of just reached out. We’ve had a really good relationship with them over the years, done some syncs, and they come to us when opportunities arise. This one popped up just when we were getting back from a break, about to start writing our new album. It was a great way to get the wheels turning again inside a bit of a sandbox.

Sometimes an album process can be overwhelming with too many options. This gave us creative constraints. The original score by Theodore Shapiro was incredible. It was really fun to take bits of that and tweak them into our own thing. It started one way, then evolved into something else. A super fun experience.

Synth History: Do you have any favorite parts of Severance—without spoilers, I guess? [ laughs]

Harrison Mills: I’m just a sucker for the “What does this all mean?” kind of show. I love looking for details, trying to figure out the bigger idea or mystery.

They do it so well. It feels real, but also dystopian. Balancing that is tough. Even visually, making something as mundane as an office look beautiful but cold, that’s hard to do, and they nailed it. There are so many creative choices that inspire us. Working with the score and getting to see parts of the show before it came out was also exciting. We did the whole thing in three weeks, but it was really fun.

Synth History: What are the main tips you’d give when working on someone else’s creation? Like Severance, where you're brought on to remix or reinterpret it.

Clayton Knight: Oh, good question!

Harrison Mills: That’s a great question.

Clayton Knight: Remix culture can be delicate. How much of the original do you keep, and how much of yourself do you insert?

Personally, I love when someone takes a piece and builds a whole new world around it, recontextualizing it. That’s the beauty of a remix. Or, maybe it’s more of a transformation. There’s an art in taking something strong and just giving it a gentle touch, making it feel a bit bigger or more open. There’s a push and pull. I’m drawn to those that put a whole new lens on something.

Synth History: When approaching a new piece of gear–hardware, software, whatever–do you read the manual or just dive right in?

Harrison Mills: I absolutely do not read the manual. I start turning knobs. The happy accidents are what create the best music, at least to me. As soon as I can start manipulating sound, that’s where the exciting stuff happens. Not to say there isn’t a lot of helpful info in the manual, but maybe I just don’t have the patience.

What about you, Clay?

Clayton Knight: No. I probably should. Sometimes I'm like, “How does this work?” But like Harrison said, that childlike curiosity can make the best art.

Knowing too much can be a limitation. I’m a full proponent of going in with an open mind, experimenting, and not putting yourself in a box. Still, there are moments where you're like, “Maybe I should know how to turn this on…”

Harrison Mills: If only I’d read the manual.

Synth History: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Clayton Knight: Yeah—or just getting it fixed. [Laughs] That’s more often the case.

But yeah, making music should be fun. It should give you that buzz.

Synth History: If you could recommend one album that everyone should listen to at least once in their lifetime, apart from your own, what would it be? Could be anything.

Harrison Mills: I have a good one.

Jorge Ben - Fôrça Bruta. It’s a Brazilian album.

I’m very afraid of flying [even though] I do it all the time. This is a record I put on during turbulence. It’s not just calming, it's feel-good. The tape saturation, the warmth, the quality, the music… it’s just one of those records I could listen to on loop forever. Everyone should check it out.

Clayton Knight: Harrison mentioned Animal Collective earlier. They have a close place in my heart. Probably Merriweather Post Pavilion, from 2009.

That album was iconic for me. It felt like Beach Boys on LSD. Seminal for both of us. That blend of pop format with their experimental sound is just so good. I still go back to “My Girls” all the time.

Synth History Exclusive. 

Photos by Jasper Newton and Andrew Franks.