It’s not an overstatement to say ODESZA has had a few years of absolute fire. The Seattle two-piece first delighted with the Summer’s Gone LP in 2012, to more than a few nods of critical acclaim and global dance floor approval. Since then they’ve inundated us with mixes, tracks and remixes that have not only kept the kids dancing – but also at points – caught us off-guard. We caught up with one half of ODESZA, Harrison, ahead of their Listen Out shows – and what better place to start than with the remix that caught us right in the feels.

Lets talk about the Hayden James ‘Something About You’ remix. So that was huge news here, and the thing that put everything back was that melodic approach to such a funk driven track. I wanna know your intentions. Why take it there?

We’re really good friends with Hayden and when he asked us to remix it we were little intimidated – we liked the song so much we didn’t want to ruin it. From the very beginning, picking a direction was hard. We started going in a more house-y way but then we thought it was too similar to the song and we really wanted to take it somewhere else. We decided to then go the complete opposite direction and lead the track to a climax – so that was the beginning idea, asking how can we make this a little more enchanting and soulful?

Did you run it past him [Hayden]? What does he think about it?

Yeah he was actually in the states while we were working on it and he came down and listened to it for the first time. We actually showed him two different versions and he was like ‘I really like this one’ so we went ahead.

What was the other one like?

The other one was this big heavy house version that we just did for fun and Hayden was like, ‘this is such a banger’ but then said the other one was beautiful. We were like, ok, lets go with the beautiful one.

Beautiful things are pretty cool. So you guys have established yourself across remixing, producing and mixing – how important is it for you guys to master all three crafts?

For us we’re just happy people are listening to our stuff – we have the coolest job in the world. I guess it’s just important for us to experiment and not do the same thing over and over. As long as people are willing to take the ride with us we’re pretty happy.

So I was introduced to you through the “No Sleep” mixes – they’re quite eclectic and have an interesting variety of tracks. How do you guys approach these?

Yeah the “No Sleep” mixes, we were trying to find stuff that not a lot of people were listening to. We’d find like a 10-year-old kid with 200 soundcloud plays in Russia [laughs]. The hope was always that people would discover new music that way – slip it through the cracks.

It’s important to you to be sharers or curators?

Yeah. Me and Clayton spend four or five hours a day listening to new music. It’s really important to us to keep our ears to the ground. I think there’s tons of kids in this world making really exciting music and no one’s heard it. We try and find those people and they influence us as much as we hopefully influence others.

Do you think that’s where the producer DJ economy is returning to – a curating and sharing of tracks as opposed to a promotion of your own wares?

Definitely. In our original mixes we would put them out with our own songs and it felt really gimmick-y so we just stopped doing it altogether. We feel like it’s more about creating a vibe than forcing people to listen to us.

So speaking of listening to you – you’re coming out for Listen Out soon. I think that might have been the worst segue I’ve ever used.

[laughs] It was pretty bad. Well for us, last time we were in Australia we saw a bunch of posters for it – and it was like Zhu and Flume and people that we really liked and we wished we could be a part of it. It’s such an honour to be involved now – we’ve got so many friends on there. We’re good friends with Golden Features and obviously Hayden James, we know a lot of people who throw the events so it’s going to be a good crew travelling together.

So what can we expect from you guys specifically at the festival? What’s your live outfit gonna look like this time round?

Basically we’re up there and we’re going to be doing live sequencing – so we’ve got everything set up so we can play around with what parts we want to play. So we’re live triggering those elements as well as both playing toms and electronic drumkit. Sometimes we bring out a brass section but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do that this time in Australia – hopefully next time.

That sounds cool and extravagant. What do you think about the dichotomy of playing live to a DJ set – what do you get out of each?

I think for a DJ set – they’re really fun. But there’s a lot of confusion there with the crowd as to what’s happening like, ‘is this them playing live? Is this a DJ set?’ . In our live shows we’ll only play our music but we’ll try and do as much drumming and things in the moment as we can whereas with our DJ sets we wont. I think people get really confused – like our DJ sets are a live show minus us drumming. For us, a DJ set is having a party, we’re going to play a set of music we really like and hopefully it gets people dancing. Whereas a live show is a place to really expose our sound and create an atmosphere for the music we make.

So let’s talk about this Little Dragon collaboration.

So we’ve done this song with Little Dragon and it’s called ‘Light’. We’re really happy with it – it was a collaboration we’ve always really wanted – we were honoured and humbled to be able to work with someone of that calibre. It was a pretty amazing experience and we cant wait to release it to the world. It’s going to be on our album’s deluxe edition – we’re also releasing a separate EP with a Little Dragon track in.

Fuck. I love Little Dragon so much.

We haven’t been able to talk about this for so long. We’ve been fans of Little Dragon forever. We got to play shows with them in Boston too which was really nice.

So how did you reconcile their sound with your sound – it’s pretty different?

Well we’re really vocal-based musicians. We produce around a vocal. Whatever we send a vocalist we usually rewrite everything from scratch around their vocal. To us it really needs to cater to that in a lot of ways – and there needs to be room to breath with each one. So it was really important to us when approaching it with her because we love her vocals so much.

Her voice is amazing.

It’s so unique. I don’t know anyone who sounds like Little Dragon.

If you guys were curating a party – who would be on the lineup? Who’s the most interesting artists right now?

So it’s a party? Well just to be selfish I’d include Hayden James because he’s our best friend and he’s an incredible DJ – his DJ sets are awesome. Then I’d put Big Wild because he’s on our label and he does an amazing live show – I’m being a little selfish with this party [laughs], it’s a party for me. Then I would put the Gorrilaz on there, just because I love them.

Wow, sounds like a rager. So if you can have anyone remix ODESZA, who would it be?

Hmm, I’m not even sure I would choose a producer. You know who I’d want? Timbaland to remix ODESZA [laughs].

[laughs] Well that could be pretty interesting. Could get something pretty flavoursome out of that.

I’d love to watch him open up a stem to one of our songs.

He might do something beautiful. So this is a bit of a burner to end with – but what do you think is the biggest issue facing electronic music today?

That’s a really good question. There’s just a bit of confusion about what it means – like what is electronic music? You’ll put your laptop on – is that electronic music? Are you a DJ? I think there’s so much confusion about what we’re actually doing on stage and what electronic music is that people find vague words and terms to try and make it up in their minds. Sometimes people will watch one of our shows and be like ‘that was an awesome DJ set’ and I’ll be like ‘well’. Like Slow Magic’s show is him doing a DJ set and then drumming over all of it live – people still go ‘he’s a great DJ’. So I think it’s interesting, people don’t even necessarily know what’s happening – which isn’t even their fault. We’re music nerds so we obsess about what people are using to make everything – but it doesn’t usually work that way. I think we need to have a bit of communication with audiences about what electronic music really is – not that I have a defining answer for it.

Do you see that becoming even more difficult to define as we move into the future?

I don’t know, maybe it will just become “music”.