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As might be expected from a project titled Nothing with a two-part “Hell Suite,” the third album from revered psych-dance outfit Darkside deals with some heavy themes. But, as guitarist Dave Harrington explains, “you can at once have the feeling of ‘we’re living in hell’ – and the funky catharsis of music.”
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Such is the dichotomy that drives Darkside’s first album in four years, a record that mirrors the uneasy state of the world today, while responding to it with some of the most vibrant material of the group’s decade-plus career.
Four years ago, Darkside returned with Spiral, its second album, and first since its seminal 2013 debut, Psychic. Now, propelled by the expansion from duo to trio with the addition of drummer Tlacael Esparza, the group is back again, in just half the time – and will embark on its first North American tour in a decade this March.
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Harrington and Jaar formed Darkside in the early ’10s, and have known Esparza for about that long: For years, Esparza played around Brooklyn in various bands led by Harrington, and in 2014, he toured Mexico with Jaar. But it was a series of gigs in Amsterdam, years later in October 2019, that catalyzed Darkside’s eventual growth into a trio. Harrington, Jaar, Esparza and the saxophonist Will Epstein had convened in the Netherlands for an all-improv residency as Bladerunner and, Esparza says, “every night, we would talk about shapes and sounds and colors and ideas, and then we’d go and play something.”
While Spiral wouldn’t be released until summer 2021, it was already mostly completed by those Dutch shows – but when Harrington and Jaar began contemplating what came after for Darkside, in the studio or on the road, it was natural to give Esparza a call. In September 2022, almost exactly eight years since Darkside had played a gig, it returned to the stage, now with Esparza in tow, with two L.A. shows — which it followed with a 2023 European tour. To introduce its new lineup to fans who hadn’t caught those concerts, Darkside released Live in Spiral House, a collection culled from summer 2022 rehearsal sessions, in 2023.
“Tlacael joining Darkside changed the band’s DNA completely,” Jaar tells Billboard by email. “Playing with him was incredibly inspiring and exciting, and we almost immediately got the idea to make the next record by applying what we learned at Spiral House in L.A. and during the first tour we did as a trio in Europe in 2023.”
With “Tlacael in the mix, we just hit a stride,” Harrington says. “We just started working on [Nothing] because we were on tour and we had some days off, and rather than sit around or go to the museum or something, we set up camp in a recording studio. We love making music together, and when we had the opportunity for the three of us to be in the same place at the same time, we jumped at the opportunity to keep making music.”
But with its members spread across the globe – Harrington in L.A., Esparza in New York, and Jaar overseas in London – those fortuitous alignments of time and place weren’t particularly common. Nothing‘s sessions totaled about three weeks, but took place over about a year, in Paris and Los Angeles. But it’s the band’s “unconventional ways,” Harrington says, that drive it creatively.
While other groups might hole up at a studio for weeks or months at a time when making an album, Darkside’s process is “one of always having this time to go back to our own musical worlds, develop things, get curious about new things and then show up again as a band,” says Harrington, calling that “certainly the story of this record, and maybe the story of all three records.”
With Nothing, Jaar and Harrington both applied the extra-Darkside projects they pursued after Spiral. In 2023, Jaar released Intiha, an abstract collaboration with the composer Ali Sethi, and last year, the Chilean-American producer released Piedras 1 & 2, two ambitious LPs tackling Chilean history and Palestinian erasure. Meanwhile, in 2021, Harrington – who begins our Zoom call noodling on a trumpet in his studio, before revealing his “SCARLET > FIRE” sweatshirt, a reference to a famed Grateful Dead song pairing – formed the mildly meta jam band Taper’s Choice with bassist Alex Bleeker (Real Estate), drummer Chris Tomson (Vampire Weekend) and keyboardist Zach Tenorio (Arc Iris). Taper’s Choice has toured regularly since, and jam luminaries like Phish’s Mike Gordon and ’60s Dead member Tom Constanten have sat in with them.
It follows, then, that on Nothing, Darkside has increased both its lyrical depth and jam quotient. At one point in our conversation, Esparza praises a particularly sunny moment in album standout “Are You Tired? (Keep On Singing)” as “the most Jerry [Garcia] part of the record,” and when previewing Darkside’s upcoming shows, Harrington says its 2013 track “Freak, Go Home” has become “almost our ‘Dark Star,’” referencing the song the Grateful Dead would often expand well over the half-hour mark. “Sometimes, when we’re really on one, it’ll turn into a 30- or 40-minute excursion,” he says with excitement. “When we play it live, it barely sounds like the riff – I mean, just barely.”
The deep history between Darkside’s three members, not to mention some of their musical inspirations – Harrington cites his and Esparza’s shared affinity for the jazz drummer Brian Blade and legendary kraut-rockers Can – made its turn toward jamming more or less inevitable. Knowing each other for so long, “you’re used to talking, you’re used to hanging out, you know what they like to eat – and then you go to play music and that’s all kind of in there,” Harrington says. (The philosophy extends to Darkside’s lighting director, who Esparza says “is an improviser as well” and responds to the band in real-time.)
But despite Darkside’s increasingly improvisational bent, Nothing is also another step forward for Jaar’s singing and lyricism – although, he notes, “I’m not a singer. Nor a lyricist, strictly speaking. I’m first and foremost a music producer.” In Darkside sessions, “The vocal elements arrive as drum parts or guitar riffs do and they are often collaged and worked on like we work on percussion. That being said, sometimes, rarely, an inspiration comes and I’ll play the part of singer, but it always involves a lot of acting, it’s a character.”
On Nothing, where Jaar ends and this character begins is ambiguous – but the album’s bold declarations, from “I did it for the time of my life and the thrill! I did it for the money! I did it for the rush!” (“SNC”) to “Look at the window, it’s hell out there” (“Hell Suite (Part II)”) are more categorical.
“We live in hell,” Esparza says as he surveys the album’s themes, “but we can experience the joy and serenity and happiness of being with our loved ones and living life. I think that that’s felt throughout the record.”
“The U.S.A. is the single most dangerous country in the history of this planet, and it’s currently led by the head honcho of a global white supremacist terror ring,” Jaar warns. But, he adds, “this hellish landscape has been made by human hands, and so it can be unmade by human hands too. If I have optimism, it’s in that.”
Anotr were worried. The Dutch dance duo had gained a following with a fleet, flinty style — “that minimal tech-house sound, a little edgy, a little gritty,” says Abel Balder, a singer who has collaborated with the pair. But in the summer of 2022, Anotr were readying new music that veered in another direction: Bubbly and openhearted, with scraps of live guitar and hand-played bass lines.
“The first few months of having the music out, we didn’t put it on Beatport,” says Oguzhan Guney, one half of the duo. “And we didn’t send it out to people because we were afraid of getting judged. We were super concerned about it.”
The attempt at stealth wasn’t entirely successful: The songs, which eventually appeared on the album The Reset, were still judged — just not the way Anotr expected. They were braced for rejection; instead, “everybody started asking us to play the new stuff” during club gigs, says Jesse van der Heijden, Guney’s partner in the group. One track, “Relax My Eyes,” became a streaming hit, with more than 225 million plays on Spotify alone. As van der Heijden puts it happily, “it’s good to be proved wrong.”
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The genial duo stripped away even more of the armor on its latest album, On a Trip, released at the end of January. While there are still songs aimed at clubs, the album sees a duo known for making dance music sometimes abandon the form altogether: “We started making music that wasn’t necessarily four on the floor,” van der Heijden says.
Once again, listeners seem happy to follow Anotr on its adventures: “How You Feel,” a giddy, sensual nu-disco single, is nearing 50 million streams on Spotify. Balder has a theory about the duo’s success: “A lot of people who go to these more edgy club nights, deep down inside, want a hug,” he says. “Maybe they didn’t know they were looking for that. And then Anotr came, and they’re like, ‘You know what? The joy and the lightness, this is what you guys need.’”
Anotr debuted on Defected Records, a dance music institution, in 2015. For years it produced stern, unflagging rhythmic workouts, sometimes moistening the dry beats with fragments of vocal samples. During the pandemic, however, the two became conscious of a gulf between the songs they were playing at home and the tracks they were producing. “We were listening to jazz, funk, soul,” Guney remembers. “[We thought], why not try to bring those two cultures together?”
Anotr is not the first artist from the dance world to move from a programmed, sample-heavy approach to one that is heavier on live instrumentation. Daft Punk built its towering reputation as shrewd samplers before famously discarding that approach in favor of human players on Random Access Memories. Crazy P also started as a pair of sample-happy producers but later morphed: “We effectively wanted to be like a disco band,” co-founder Jim Baron told Billboard.
The inflection point for Anotr was a 2022 song titled “Vertigo.” The track was created with Balder, who had been doing sessions with the duo for years. They always got along well personally, but often landed far apart musically; Balder’s attempts to add “borderline-cheesy melodies” were always politely rebuffed. Until that year, when the duo was reenergized by its ambition to bring more funk, soul, and jazz into its productions.
The pair recorded a racing rhythm track punctured by keening electric guitar; feeling a little reckless, Balder offered to sing on the track, even though he had never cut vocals before. By way of explanation, he remembers that “it was around 3 a.m., and we were on the couch getting high.”
Anotr has enjoyed a number of creative breakthroughs in this state. “Relax My Eyes” was made over the course of a couple days during which the two took “long walks, smoked a lot of weed, and took mushrooms.” (Such psychedelic mushrooms feature prominently in the press release announcing the album, almost as if they were a high-profile executive producer.) Van der Heijden believes the duo has “never been as high” as they were when recording “24 (Turn It Up)(+6).” “We took a lot of shrooms, smoked a lot of weed, and the instrumental already felt really right,” he remembers.
In February 2022, when Anotr debuted “Vertigo” during a boat party off the coast of Uruguay, Balder didn’t expect much. But the audience on the boat “exploded — people kept coming up to all of us saying, ‘Wow, that track is amazing.’”
“Vertigo” came out on The Reset, and several tracks from On a Trip giddily improve upon that template. “How You Feel” channels impassioned Euro-disco, with guitars that flicker like candlelight and come-hither vocals from Leven Kali. That one proved to be so effective ANOTR basically remade it as “Currency,” a deft bilingual collaboration with Cimafunk and Pame. “24 (Turn It Up)(+6)” evokes David Morales’ singles from 20 years ago like “Here I Am.”
At the same time, Guney says, “we wanted to do something more downtempo and more straight-from-the-heart, instead of only feel-good music.” “Care for You” and “Bad Trip” are both stuttering, loungey funk. “Don’t Understand” also gives a cold shoulder to the pounding beats that underpin most dance tracks, and “Can’t Let It Go” is a melancholy ballad. Mushrooms sometimes helped the duo write more candid lyrics: “You’re taking these psychedelics,” Guney explains, “and they basically enhance what you feel from the inside, so you can’t hide your emotions anymore.”
In January, Anotr were in a familiar place — nervous about putting out new music. “It’s a lot of fun trying new things until the moment where you actually know that you need to share it, and anxiety creeps up,” van der Heijden says. “But after we’ve released it, we can see people still f— with this.”
The duo has already embarked on a country-hopping tour that takes it from Australia to South America to the U.S. and then back to Europe, with upcoming U.S. dates including March shows at Brooklyn Storehouse in Chicago’s Radius. “Now,” van der Heijden adds, “we know we can actually do anything we want.”
Bonnaroo is building a brand new stage for its 2025 event.
Announced Tuesday (Feb. 25), the Infinity Stage will feature a collection of dance and electronic acts, including a b2b set from bass masters Of the Trees and Tape B, a DJ set from Big Gigantic, a DJ set from Rebecca Black, heavy hitter Mary Droppinz, indie dance producer Washed Out, Italian duo Parisi and a Friday stage takeover featuring artist’s from John Summit’s Experts Only label.
The Infinity Stage will be an open-air space composed of three domes, which together will form an immersive area being called “the world’s largest 360-degree spatial audio experience.” The stage is being produced in partnership with Polygon Live, which specializes in such immersive audio experiences, and which has previously hosted stages at festivals including Thailand’s Wonderfruit and MDLBEAST in Saudi Arabia.
“We want to keep it an intimate and truly engaging spatial experience for everybody, so we’re going the route of multiple circles moving forward,” Polygon Live’s David Lopez de Arenosa said at the Billboard Touring Summit in November, in terms of how the company’s multi-domed stage setups optimize sound.
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Elsewhere, the Bonnaroo 2025 lineup is heavy on dance acts, with headliners including Justice, Dom Dolla and John Summit, along with Sammy Virji, Green Velvet, RL Grime, Lszee, Barry Can’t Swim and many more. Outside of dance, 2025 headliners include Luke Combs, Tyler, the Creator, Olivia Rodrigo, Glass Animals, Avril Lavigne, Queens of the Stone Age, Hozier and Vampire Weekend.
Bonnaroo 2025 happens in Manchester, Tenn., June 12-15.
See the complete Infinity Stage lineup below.
Breakaway, the company behind the touring dance event Breakaway Music Festival, is launching a label and management division focused on emerging artists called Breakaway Projects. The first wave of signees to the label, which is partnered with The Orchard for distribution, includes a fresh collection of electronic producers such as Surf Mesa, Jaded, Evan Giia, […]
Grimes posted a pair of previously unreleased demos on Monday (Feb. 24) that the singer said are among her favorite unheard tracks. Both songs are somewhat of a departure for the singer, including the mostly acoustic “The Fool,” which finds her singing new lyrics over Mazzy Star’s beloved 1994 ballad “Fade Into You.”
“Ok I always loved this one I just wrote a diff song over Mazzy Star but the files are forever lost on my laptop that a child poured liquid on,” she wrote on X. “It was just a rly beautiful jam on a poem I wrote I wish I didn’t get discouraged away from it.”
On the gentle track — which she first teased the day before the 2024 presidential election — she sings in her signature helium voice, “Oh you’re a fool, ’cause you tried to give me the moon/ And all I can give back is poetry/ So tell me what to do/ And I’ll convince the stars to love you.”
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The second song, “I Don’t Give a F–k, im Insane,” is more in line with the dance pop star’s typical vibe, with a bouncy bass line, ethereal vocals and spare drums. “I don’t give a f–k, I’m insane/ Everybody walk through my brain/ One day, you told me, I’ll fly away, safe,” she sings over the sparse, new wave-like beat.
Of that one she wrote, “Just for good vibes we put up a few ancient demos on SoundCloud 2day – 2019 demo I made. Obviously no time was spent on it but my old manager at would always pester me to finish it and make it a banger but i forgot I suppose… Def has a lot of potential tho I’ll probably make a better topline and produce it one day.”
Meanwhile, as her ex, Elon Musk, buzzsaws through the federal government in his role as an unelected cost-cutter, Grimes also answered some questions from TIME magazine about AI and her strong reaction to the world’s richest man parading their four-year-old son, X, on his shoulders during a recent White House visit.
“It was like, ‘Grimes slams,’ ‘Grimes speaks out.’ It’s like, OK, it was a reply. But I would really like people to stop posting images of my kid everywhere,” she said of the many headlines in which she criticized the “special government employee” for bringing their son to work. “I think fame is something you should consent to. Obviously, things will just be what they are. But I would really, really appreciate that. I can only ask, so I’m just asking,” added the artist who was honored at the TIME100 Impact Awards ceremony in Dubai earlier this month.
At the time, Grimes seemed surprised to see her son sticking his fingers in his dad’s ears as Musk stood over a seated Donald Trump while the president signed an executive order giving the DOGE office more power to continue its legally suspect firing spree of non-partisan public servants. “He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank u for alerting me,” Grimes wrote earlier this month of her surprise at seeing the preschooler accompanying his dad for the Oval Office photo op.
Several days later, Grimes tweeted directly at X owner Musk, saying in a since-deleted tweet, “plz respond about our child’s medical crisis. I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation.”
Listen to “The Fool” and “I Don’t Give a F–k, im Insane” below.
The Do Lab has announced the lineups for its stage at Coachella 2025.
The electronic heavy bills, which are different for each weekend of the festival, feature artists including Tokimonsta, Anderson .Paak performing as DJ Pee .Wee, a DJ set from Confidence Man, a DJ set by Tycho, Nimino, Kaleena Zanders, Villager, Ladies of Leisure, Rudimental b2b Skepsis, Snakehips b2b What So Not, J. Phlip, Aqutie and many more.
The Do Lab has been hosting a stage at Coachella since 2005, with the area having been home to performances by big name artists including Billie Eilish, DJ Snake, Rüfüs Du Sol and many others. The Do Lab also produces its flagship festival Lightning In a Bottle, which is happing again this May near Bakersfield, Calif., with a lineup that includes John Summit, Jamie xx, Khruangbin, Four Tet, Subtronics and many more.
The Do Lab’s Coachella 2005 lineups increase the dance/electronic factor on the already dance/electronic heavy bill. Announced in November, the main lineup includes Above & Beyond, The Prodigy, Sara Landry, Keinemusic, Alok, Darkside, Zedd, Kraftwerk and many others.
Coachella has three stages dedicated exclusively to dance music: the massive Sahara Tent, the club-space Yuma and Quasar, a stage that debuted in 2024 and is dedicated to extended sets. Dance music also happens across nearly all of the festivals other stages.
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Coachella returns to Indio, Calif., over two weekends, on April 13-15 and 20-22; 2025 headliners are Green Day, Lady Gaga and Post Malone, with a special set from Travis Scott.
As Little Monsters everywhere gear up for the release of Lady Gaga’s hotly anticipated new album Mayhem, Mother Monster herself is giving them a glimpse of what they can expect from the new LP.
In a new interview for InStyle, Gaga spoke with Spotify’s head of global editorial Sulinna Ong ahead of her Little Monster Press Conference for the streamer. During their conversation, the “Abracadabra” singer shared a sneak preview of two songs — “The Beast” and “Perfect Celebrity,” respectively — that are featured on her new album.
Speaking about “The Beast,” Gaga revealed that the lyrics of the song see her “singing to a werewolf” that represents her. “The lyrics are: ‘You can’t hide who you are, 11:59, your heart’s racin’, you’re growling, and we both know why,’” Gaga revealed. “And somehow that gothic dream is not just about me in a relationship with this person that’s about to turn, but what if I was to just sing it to myself and the beast is Gaga?”
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When talking about “Perfect Celebrity,” Gaga mentioned that the concept of “duality” present in both her videos for “Disease” and “Abracadabra” continue in the new track’s lyrics. “The lyric is: ‘I’ve become a notorious being, find my clone, she’s asleep on the ceiling,” she said. “It’s this idea that we all, in a way, have our real selves and then our clone version that we project to the world. So there’s a lot in Mayhem about multiple yous or multiple mes and what it’s like to have those things be at odds with each other all the time.”
As for the inspiration behind her new project, the singer pointed directly to ballroom culture as a driving force that found its way into the album’s music and lyrics. “I grew up in New York City and I also was a student of Paris Is Burning when I was really, really young. And I was always inspired by the tremendous amount of grace, freedom, expression and joy of ballroom culture,” she said. I was lucky enough to be around some dancers that were a part of that life.”
Gaga continued, adding that she felt it is a “privilege” to be a member of the dance community, and to be embraced by those who have built such lasting institutions. “There are these spaces in the world where there’s an ability for the community to express and experience joy, even when life is not treating them that way,” she explained. “And I am still so inspired by it and to this day, it felt like a relevant thing to bring up in the [“Abracadabra”] video because it’s about resilience. I can’t think of a place where I’ve seen more resilience than in a ballroom.”
The news comes just one week after Gaga unveiled the tracklist for Mayhem (due out March 7 via Interscope), including singles “Disease,” “Abracadabra” and “Die With a Smile,” as well as the two new tracks she teased. Spotify’s Little Monster Press Conference — during which Gaga’s fans will have the opportunity to ask Mother Monster their own questions — is set to take place Thursday, March 6, at 6 p.m. ET, simulcast across Spotify’s social media accounts.
Billboard’s THE STAGE at SXSW is back, and we’re breaking down the star-studded performances for March 2025. Keep watching to learn more! Who are you excited to see perform? Let us know in the comments! Buy your tickets here! Tetris Kelly: We’re getting lit in Austin! Billboard just announced the opening acts to the already […]
This week in dance music: Massive Attack will headline London’s LIDO festival in June with an entirely battery-powered performance, an ongoing legal battle between Sony Music and Ultra Music Publishing escalated with a new lawsuit, Carl Cox exited the Movement 2025 lineup and was replaced by Jeff Mills and Odesza made a 23-minute remix of the Severance score.
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And to all that we add these, the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Mochakk feat. The RAH Band, “From the Stars”
Brazil’s jet-setting party starter makes his Ninja Tune debut with his From the Stars EP, a two-song project led by its title track. A collaboration with England’s The RAH Band, the song is a take on the group’s 1983 bop “Messages From the Stars,” with Mochakk turning up the BPM and the far-out factor on the slinky, sexy but still muscular club update, which balances nicely with its cool after-hours B-side, “Maria.” The mustachioed producer born Pedro Maia calls releasing the EP on Ninja Tune “completely bananas… one of those stamp-of-approval moments” that he’ll celebrate by playing a flurry of shows in his native country as Brazil celebrates carnival later this month. Closer to home, he plays EDC Las Vegas in May.
Röyksopp feat. Robyn, “Do It Again [True Electric]”
11 years after the release of the original, Röyksopp drop an edit of their Robyn collab “Do It Again.” While the original leaned hard into urgency and flirted with heaviness, the new take adds maximum peak hours heft, dialing up the BPM, isolating the vocals in just the right moments and eventually exploding into all-out, all-encompassing dancefloor delirium. The edit is the second track from the Norwegian legends’ tenth studio album, True Electric, coming April 11 on their own Dog Triumph label.
Bianca Oblivion feat. Sam Binga, “Hypnø”
Los Angeles-based producer Bianca Oblivion makes her long-form debut with a heater of an EP, Net Werk. The four-track project spans bass, grime, Jersey club and more, with “Hypnø” (a collab with British artist Sam Binga) fusing squelchy strings, a hectic beat and waves of low end into a delicious kind of chaos. Oblivion says she “never wanted to rush into an EP or album until I fully understood myself as a producer and felt that my music could stand alongside the tracks I play in my sets.” The title reflects the global network of friends and collaborators I’ve connected with over the years, all of whom, alongside the many music influences from my childhood, have helped shape this release.” Net Werk is out on the U.K. imprint LuckyMe.
Tripolism & Nandu, “Sunrise”
Danish trio Tripolism and producer Nandu link for the hypnotic “Sunrise,” a track that says right there in the name what part of the set it should be played at. It’s recently been rinsed by acts including the ever chic Keinemusik and has gotten support from other tastemakers, with key ears apparently in thrall with the track’s balance of sunlight-like falsetto and a chant that implores what those of us still dancing at dawn might already feel: “You’re never going home, you’ve got to keep going.” The heater is out on Ultra Records.
Hiver, “Dreamachine“
Be transported to the ’90s afterhours of your mind with this electronica-era influenced dreamscape of a track from Milanese duo Hiver. Out on CircoLoco Records, the track pairs pristine production and clean, soaring strings with a feeling of undertow embodied by the beat and the emotive vocals. Hiver says the song is “a testament to our growth as producers. We’ve invested countless hours in honing our studio skills, experimenting with sound design, and perfecting the production process to craft something that feels authentic and unique. The track reflects our love for the electro sound while pushing boundaries to create something unique.” Also: Do not sleep on the uptempo edit by Romanian master Gerd Janson.
Fans of the show know that getting a job offer related to Severance might be an unsettling proposition, but the gentlemen of Odesza jumped at the opportunity.
“We’re mega-fans,” the duo’s Harrison Mills says of the show, which tracks the bifurcated existences of the employees of Lumon Industries, a mysterious, seemingly nefarious global conglomerate that employs people who’ve chosen to undergo a neural procedure that severs their personal and professional lives, making it so that neither part is aware of the other. After a three-year hiatus, the show’s acclaimed second season launched on Apple TV+ last month.
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Today (Feb. 21), fans of the series are getting a company bonus via a mix of the Severance theme song created by Odesza. The pair — Mills and Clayton Knight — transformed the soundtrack into a 23-minute mix that’s also been looped to form an eight hour piece of music, not coincidentally the same amount of time as a standard 9-5 workday. Hear the 23-minute mix, set to footage from the show, below.
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Upon accepting the remix offer, Mills and Knight were provided with the complete (and then still unreleased) season two episodes, along with the stems of the score created by Teddy Shapiro, who won an Emmy Award for Severance‘s season one soundtrack and returned for season two.
“We wanted to take people on a journey and give a wider breadth of music and play off and reinterpret Teddy’s score in a unique way,” says Mills. “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.”
Being based in Seattle also helped the duo in the creation process, with the current dark days of winter helping them get in a mental zone that matched the show. Unlike the characters, however, they did not flip the work switch off at the end of the day. “We were literally living and breathing this thing,” says Knight, “going to bed thinking about it, probably too much in the zone.”
Working under a hard deadline — they project had to be completed in just a month — was helpful, as the tight timeline made it so they didn’t overthink decisions or get too in the weeds on what they were doing.
Their final product takes cues from the show — including the signature piano chords from its theme and other sonic moments, like typing — and folds them into a mix that reflects the themes of Severance itself, balancing light and dark moments. Mills describes it as,”lulling you 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.”
They agree that the project took inspiration from their own 2020 side project, Bronson, which focused on darker, heavier sounds than the typical Odesza output. The mix was also a natural fit given that, Mill says, “we’ve always been so influenced by film scores and scores in general.” Meetings with Shapiro also instilled confidence, as the composer, Mills continues, “was so open and receptive to us just doing anything… He was such a fun person to bounce our ideas off of and was so receptive to us trying things. It just allowed us to really have fun with it.”
“It’s got Odesza energy, but it tries to capture the tone and motifs of the show,” says Knight. “It’s also the first time we haven’t had a vocal element to work with. It uses zero vocals. So it was us going back to our roots in terms of tempo, slowing everything down to keep it more cinematic and keeping it more instrumental, not relying on a lead top line to carry anything and letting the instrumentation speak for itself. It was definitely a different workflow than we’ve done the past, but really fun and exciting.”
The project also arrived at a synergistic moment for the broader Odesza trajectory. The guys wrapped their massive The Last Goodbye tour last July, with the run (named for their 2022 album) spanning 54 shows at 48 venues throughout North America, including headlining sets at festivals like Governors Ball and Bonnaroo. (In 2022 and 2023, the tour grossed $35.8 million and sold 601,000 tickets, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.)
The pair have since been on a break and are just now getting back into album writing mode, with the Severance mix helping them get their musical gears once again turning.
“It was a really nice first stepping stone into what will be our next project, the big album project,” says Knight. “It’s a nice way to get the creative juices flowing again and to jump in without having too many avenues.” He adds that for the foreseeable future, “We’re definitely in writing mode. 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.”
“We’re experimenting,” Mills adds. “We want to build time to find inspiration and to innovate and just not feel too pressured to just be on another cycle again.”
Given the pressure that their jobs can contain, one wonders if Mills and Knight would ever consider severing their personal and professional lives, like Lumon employees. They laugh at the question. Knight says that while they’d maybe want to forget about “some earlier shows where we played in a hotel lobby, to 20 people looking at their phones,” ultimately they’re happy to be integrated.
“We have the best jobs in the world,” says Knight. “We get to make music and hang out with cool people and make fun projects. There’s really no complaining.”