Odesza's Clayton Knight (left): 'I get bored pretty fast, so I have to stay busy'. Photo / supplied
Odesza's Clayton Knight (left): 'I get bored pretty fast, so I have to stay busy'. Photo / supplied
Odesza found widespread success with their sophomore album In Return three years ago now - but for the Seattle duo, there's been little time to rest.
"Breathing and relaxing is something we don't do a lot of," says Clayton Knight, who makes up Odesza, along with Harrison Mills.
"After In Return came out, we basically toured straight through these past couple of years, and by the end of that run we were pretty beat-up. We took a little vacation, and then we went into writing mode.
"I get bored pretty fast, so I have to stay busy or I just do nothing. I like the pace - it's kind of grown on me."
Last week, Odesza released their third album, A Moment Apart. Knight and Mills worked tirelessly on the record largely in the first half of this year - though some of the songs have been written since before In Return. A Moment Apart finds the duo back on form, creating spacious, heady electronic soundscapes - but this time, they've embraced a newfound sense of opulence and grandeur.
"A lot of that stemmed from doing live shows and being influenced by other live shows - making the show more epic led to this more epic sound that we really fell in love with," says Knight.
"We've always been big fans of film scores and really epic-sounding pieces overall, so I think it was just a natural progression for our next step - to make this huge, over-arching sound that hopefully blows people's hair back a little bit."
Odesza have taken their live show to more epic, cinematic heights. Photo / supplied
A Moment Apart features an impressive roster of guest features lending their vocals to Odesza's beats, including Leon Bridges, Mansionair and Regina Spektor. Knight says they've been big fans of Spektor for some time - and their collaboration resulted in the duo receiving a spontaneous private concert from the singer.
"We just hit her up one day and we shared a couple of tracks with her, and she really connected with one. She was performing in Seattle one day and she was like, 'I wrote this stuff, I really want you guys to hear it but I'm afraid to just send it, so can you guys come over to the hotel and I'll just perform it for you'."
"It was a weird first interaction - she just went up, she played the demo beats on her laptop and sang over it, and it blew us away. We were like, we have to make something out of this," says Knight.
Odesza play the Great Hall at Auckland's Town Hall tonight, with support from The Kite String Tangle and Running Touch.
LOWDOWN: Who: Odesza What: Auckland concert, new album A Moment Apart When: Thursday September 14 Where: Auckland Town Hall
