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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.”