Getting intimate with Odesza

Odesza, consisting of Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight, are absolutely killing it on the electronic music scene. They blend inspiration from genres across the board into a sound that’s innovative yet cozy as your grandma’s kitchen, and in doing so they're making critics’ panties drop the world over. The guys are nearly through with the US leg of their Set It Off tour, playing their acclaimed sophomore album In Return to an exploding fan base. Despite all the Twitter followers and glowing reviews, Harrison and Clay are as down to earth as the day they started making basement jams together.

We snuggled up for a Skype session with the guys to get to know them a little better before they kickstart the European portion of the tour in Copenhagen this week.

VICE: Hey guys, you don’t want to turn on your camera? I promise, I won’t show you my penis.
Clay: This isn’t Chat Roulette! Ok there we go, hi.

Where are you?
Harrison: We’re at home in Seattle, basically in a basement. This is our little hub for making music; behind us we have a bunch of drums, guitars, keyboards and stuff.

So you can actually play some instruments? You're not just laptop geeks?
H: No we’re definitely laptop geeks, but we dabble in other instruments. I only know "Sk8ter Boi" on guitar – that’s it.

I guess you guys have been doing a lot of these interviews lately, so what are you getting tired of hearing?
We can definitely tell you the top 5 questions we always get asked:

• What are your biggest inspirations?
• Describe your sound in 3 words.
• How’d you get your name?
• Then they always try to be funny and ask something like “If you were a superhero, what super power would you have?”
• Has coming from Seattle influenced your sound? Like we’re gonna buy plaid shirts tomorrow and do a strictly Nirvana remix album.

That makes my life easier. You’re kicking off the European leg of the Set It Off tour in Copenhagen next week, have either of you been here before?
H: We’ve never been to Europe at all! We’re not sure if they’ll even let us in. I haven’t checked my Visa status.

Well, the venue you’re playing at, Loppen, is in the middle of Christiania – Denmark’s national treasure. A sort of weed emporium. So there’s a good chance the crowd will be completely stoned, is that pretty normal?
H: I think any drug is pretty common, we’ve played enough hippie festivals where we definitely have that fan base, yeah.

Does the crowd vary depending on the drug? How can you tell if they’re rolling or completely stoned?
C: It’s all in the pupils. A little while ago we played an all ages show in Denver, Colorado and there were a lot of young kids rolling pretty hard. Denver likes to party, apparently.

H: My favorite thing is to be playing and look up and make direct eye contact with someone who is tripping very hard and we both have that moment where I’m like “You’re on drugs…” and they’re like “I’M ON DRUGS!”

You guys will be touring Europe with a bunch of other producers like Slow Magic and Craft Spells, how does a tour bus full of producers compare to, say, a rock band?
H: It’s way nerdier, I would imagine. I’ve never travelled with a rock band, but for us it’s like “Aw man, how do you get that frequency range out of that Logic file?! Whoa!”

I guess everyone’s on their laptops all the time then. Do you go full laptop on the pooper?
C: Full laptop… on the pooper. That’s a great saying. No, I use my smart phone. I mean if you go full laptop, then you’re sitting down for a while; you’re in there for good. People already get mad at us on tour, because we’re in there for too long.

H: We do a lot of writing in there but no, never gone full laptop. Maybe I should try it now.

How’s the fangirl situation been so far?
H: It can range from absolutely terrible to meeting a genuine person from time to time, but rarely.

C: There’s a lot of young kids, which is very dangerous. We’re on constant jailbait patrol.

Speaking of fans, I imagine it's super easy for your fans to get a hold of you directly through social media. What are some of the more memorable messages you’ve gotten?
H: Someone wrote me that the number of college freshmen who have been deflowered to an Odesza song is over 1,000. That was funny. I think the most memorable though, was a fan who sent us frame by frame shots of them listening to one of our songs and crying and then a three page essay about how much our music meant to them. That’s very intense for two dudes who make music in a basement.

Who is somebody you would never want to collab with or remix?
H: I don’t know, Bono. He doesn’t seem like he’d be super easy to work with in the studio.

If Bono came to you guys on hands and knees asking for a collab, you wouldn’t be into it?
H: I would say you lost your chance when your album immediately downloaded onto my phone without my permission.

What are you guys doing with your live performance to set it apart from the “we wear black hoodies and play laptop” stigma?
H: Well, we wear black hoodies on stage, both of us.

C: Basically we use Ableton Live and how that works is, we each have control over a piece of the song, so I have control of the drum and bass while Harrison controls the melody and vocals and in that way, we can freestyle a little bit more and jam on it, so it is different from DJing.

Favorite tracks from the new album?
C: I like "Kusanagi" and "It’s Only", by far. I think we both agree. We like the weirder ones, the ones that people maybe don’t like as much.

We like it too. Thanks guys, see you at Loppen on November 7th!