You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
In September 2014, Odeza put out their album In Return.
It debuted at number one on Billboard's dance and 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 Ovadeza 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 Rishi Kesherway.
You're listening to Song Exploder.
I am Clayton Knight, one half of Odessa.
And I'm Harrison Mills, the other half.
We had been playing like a lot of heavy electronic music festivals where it's a DJ act and they're playing these just bangers after banger after banger and he just beats you up.
And we're just like kind of burnt out,
kind of like beating over the head with this heavy electronic sound for like for so long.
We're like, God, I wish we could just make something that's the opposite direction completely.
Really low key and basically ambient.
We were in L.A. at Sean Kusanagi's house.