YOUR AD HERE »

Electronic extravaganza: Fresh sounds coming Saturday to Tahoe Biltmore

Courtesy photo
Marybeth Coghill |

If you go

What: Odesza, Emancipator and Little People

When: 9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 23

Where: Tahoe Biltmore Lounge

Tickets: $18 in advance, $21 day of the show

CRYSTAL BAY, Nev. — Less than a year into existence, electronic music duo Odesza is on its first big tour and learning as they go.

“We’ve been working about eight months on this music,” Odesza’s Harrison Mills said. “It’s pretty new for us. We’re learning stuff every day.”

Odesza will be grooving at Tahoe Biltmore Lounge on Saturday, along with Emancipator and Little People.



Odesza is Mills and Clayton Knight, both from Washington state. They met through a mutual friend in Bellingham, Wash. Both had a passion for creating electronic music, which kindled a collaborative spark.

“One day I had all my stuff over, and I was hanging out with Clay’s roommate,” Mills said. “We got together and went downstairs and pumped out three songs. We were like, ‘holy shit, this is really good chemistry, we should make an album.’ So we spent the summer working on it.”



Released in September as a free download, “Summers Gone” is described on the band’s website as “a delicate balance between dreamy sun trickled melodies, glitched out vocals, crunchy drums and large sweeping basslines.”

Thus far, Mills has been pleased with the response to their debut record.

“It’s been way more than we ever expected, really crazy,” Mills said. “People have been really supportive. We’ve been surprised to see so much hometown love. We thought some blogs would catch on, that was all we really hoped for.”

Trip-hop artist Emancipator invited Odesza on their first big tour, heading down the pacific coast and then to New Mexico and Colorado.

“We’ve been really spoiled so far by Emancipator,” Mills said. “They’ve been really nice and let us live on their bus for this tour. Tour life is really interesting, you never really know what’s going to happen, where you’re going to sleep.”

Mills and Knight are focused on developing their live show.

“The feel we go for is to get people’s head nodding at the beginning, introduce our kind of music,” Mills said. “Then about halfway through we try to really kick it up, get people dancing.”

He mentioned that as an opening electronic dance band, it can be challenging to get the audience moving.

“It’s kind of hard, because from where we’re standing, we only see the first two or three rows,” he said. “A lot of the time those people are there to see the headlining act, so they’re the ones you have to win over.”

Beyond the current tour, Odesza has some remixes ready for release, and is working on the next E.P.

“We’ve done a few remixes that are going to be released soon,” Mills said. “We’ve been giving away free download cards, and just putting everything on our website. We are going to be talking to labels once we have something that we’re proud to show.


Support Local Journalism

 

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Lake Tahoe, Truckee, and beyond make the Sierra Sun's work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Your donation will help us continue to cover COVID-19 and our other vital local news.