Watch This: ODESZA premiere an album’s worth of unreleased music at Red Rocks

by: Ryan Castillo May 31, 2017

Due to their meticulously rehearsed, top-notch live performance—resplendent with genre-bending trap, indietronica, and future bass—ODESZA aren’t exactly known for switching up their sets from stop to stop. Just one week after ODESZA premiered a new track ID at their home town global tour kick off, however, the Seattle-based duo delivered as many as 8 entirely new tracks while at their headlining show at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado.

Amid rumors of a new album in the works and plenty of chatter over whether the two would be dropping songs off the new LP at their latest two-night run, which took place May 27-28, the duo certainly delivered on this tacit promise to their fanbase. While both nights’ sets resembled the exact same order of song progression, what made ODESZA’s live performance so memorable and, indeed impressive, was just that: it was a live band experience. An immersive experience at that, complete with all the interchangeable moving parts of a well-cogged machine, including a dramatically choreographed drum line and a stunning visual production by STS9‘s former lighting designer, Saxton Waller, of Colorado-based Brown Note Production.

The direction ODESZA has taken is a clear step away from the EDM duo we’ve come to know, with the duo of Harrison and Clayton eschewing the drums and mixers for one more towards an electronic rock music aesthetic with the two front liners introducing their fellow bandmates on the guitar, trumpet, and trombone. Whether ODESZA plans to oscillate between DJ sets and live acts isn’t known, but make no mistake that the new album—which hasn’t been given an official release date—will contain all the classic musical elements that we’ve come to love about the ODESZA sound stamp: ebullient and ethereal, over a heavy low-end bass line foundation.