American dance duo Odesza have created a mix ‘inspired’ by the Apple+ TV series Severance. And it’s free – indeed, you can listen to it in the Youtube link below.
Not heard of Severance? Well, it’s a sci-fi thriller set in a fictional corporation called Lumon with a high-profile executive producer in the shape of Ben Stiller. Our hero is employee Mark Scout (Adam Scott) who agrees to a ‘severance’ procedure in which his work and personal life memories are split. In other words, he has no recollection of his home life whilst at Lumon and vice versa. Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Odesza – aka Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight – are huge fans of the show which returned for its second season last month. The duo have taken the show’s existing score and created a 23 minute mix that has been looped to create an eight hour piece of music: which is the same length as, well, a supposedly ‘normal’ working day.
“We wanted to take people on a journey and give a wider breadth of music and play off and reinterpret the score in a unique way,” Mills said when they were interviewed by Billboard recently. “We put different chords under a lot of his melodies, while also trying to stay true to the vibe of the show, which is kind of creepy and subversive. You’re not overtly aware of this dark underbelly.”
Odesza’s mix takes the show’s signature piano chords and weaves in other sounds like the workers tapping away on their keyboards. According to Mills this is to lull the listener “into this false sense of security that it’s all happy and then bringing these darker sounds that creep into it. It’s like beautiful melancholy. There’s sadness, but there’s also surface level joy throughout. We were trying to play with major chords, but then sneak in these weird, kind of dissonant sounds that creep in.”
Signed to Ninja Tune in the UK, duo have released four albums, the most recent being the critically acclaimed The Last Goodbye in 2022. According to the Billboard interview they’re currently working on new material of their own: “We’re definitely in writing mode,” says Knight. “We have some DJ sets sprinkled throughout the year, but (now) it’s really a focus on studio time and making the next chapter of the Odesza project.”
