You're listening to Song Explorer, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishike Shirway. In September 2014, Odessa put out their album in return. They debuted at number one on Billboard's Dancing Electronic Charts and spent 13 weeks in the top 10.
But the song Kusanagi isn't a dance track. It slows down the pace of the album. And in this episode, Clay and Harrison Ovidessa explain why. They tell the story of how they made the track along with their friend and collaborator who they named the song after, Sean Kusanagi.
This episode was recorded live at Moogfest in Durham, North Carolina. My name is Rishike Shirway. You're listening to Song Explorer. I am Clay tonight, one and a half of Odessa.
I'm Harrison Mills, the other half. We had been playing a lot of heavy electronic music festivals, where it's a DJ act, and they're playing these just bangers after a banger after a banger. And he just beats you up. And we're just kind of burnt out, kind of like beating over the head with this heavy electronic sound for so long.
We're like, I wish we could just make something that's the opposite direction completely. Really low-key and basically ambient. We were in LA at Sean Kusanagi's house. Sean's extremely important.
He's like a secret third member of Odessa. He introduced me in Clay back in college. I've known him since 16. That he's played guitar on every single one of our albums.
This is Sean Kusanagi and I play guitar in Odessa. Clay and Harrison were on tour staying off my couch in LA. And I was just messing around playing some chords on acoustic guitar. When we heard those chords, we knew we needed to do something with them, because they sounded so beautiful.
We just kept talking about how we'd love. To take that, we didn't have our equipment with us really to record too much. So that was just the beginning of the idea. Since we were on tour, we waited until we were off.
And we decided we'd go to a very comfortable space to keep working on it. So we went back to Clay and Sean's hometown, which is Bainbridge Island. It's right outside Seattle, it's a fair way. And we went to Sean's parents' house and they have this kind of side house next to their home.
It's right on the water in the rainy northwest. So it was very, very inspiring. And yeah, that was the first thing we wanted to start working on with was that song. When it came time to go into the studio, that's where we laid down the full chords that you hear in the track.
So those main four chords are actually guitar swells. I played it all with a volume pedal. So you can kind of hear if you listen really closely, you can hear the kind of hiss of the amp when the volume gets all the way up. To me, it felt like kind of a distant memory and feelings of longing.
That was something we really thought about and how do we keep emphasizing that feeling. Those children vocals, it's actually an old Christmas record and it's chopped up. So they're not saying words anymore because I think when lyrics are said, you make an instant connection and that's we're going for more of an emotive tone and atmosphere to immerse yourself in instead of a specific meeting. We had these ideas for these strings.
It was like we can't hire an orchestra. So we found ways around it in ways to make these sounds that were kind of corny in the computer and layer them properly to make something unique and kind of special. The electronic music we make is important for us to have a very human aspect to it. That's us dropping stuff on a table.
I think we've had some sticks for a break out of the table. It's like a plank of wood. I think there's like ripped paper. Yeah, a lot of weird stuff.
I'm just thinking of how stupid we look. Yeah, watching someone just drop quarters and look at you like that's the one. We get it? That was pretty funny.
Well, my favorite part of the track is the guitar sweep. That's when you hear that. The I actually can't take any credit for writing that part because it was all done by clay and Harrison when they took single guitar notes that I played and then they recorded it, play another note and record it. And then put that on this sampler and then with the sample, you can kind of play out stuff that you wouldn't be able to play on guitar, basically.
That would be really hard. What we're able to do is you have a crease like this really percussive sound with each individual note. You know, it sounds like a guitar, but it's played in a fashion that almost is unplayable. It's also fun to kind of limit yourself.
Like you have this sound. You need to make something completely new out of it. Taking an actual sound, a human sound, and trying to manipulate it to make it a melody or a pad or something is a fun process. That was a field recording that we took of just a playground.
Every time we hear that, I just think of Sean's house and the ferry right over and like just being, you know, which is such a nice thing. And around that time we had been touring so much that home had become this whole new meaning for us. And when you're living at a suitcase for that long, don't get me wrong. I can't complain about being musicians the best job ever.
But those things become so much more powerful to you and seeing your friends and family have so much more meaning when you, you know, get pulled away from it. And now here's Kusanagi by Odessa in its entirety. For more information on Odessa and their music, visit SongExploder.net. Special thanks to MoogFest for hosting the taping at their festival.
Next time on SongExploder, churches. Follow SongExploder on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. My username is at SongExploder. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at SongExploder.net, or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts.
SongExploder is a proud member of RadioTopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows. Learn more at RadioTopia.fm. This episode was edited with help from Christian Coons. My name is Rishike Sherway.
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