Introducing Oda, a set of home speakers that create an unconventional live music experience in your home. With seasonal programming from more than 20 artists per season, Oda was made with the goal of creating a sustainable economy for performing artists and musicians. Members will experience original commissions, collaborations and experiments by some of the world’s most compelling creatives and storytellers. All Oda performances are a one-time unique live event, accessible only through the speakers, and will challenge what a performance can be.
“Oda is thinking intelligently about ways to remake the relationship between audience and artist.” – The Quietus
Oda speakers act as the instrumental partner to communicate the artists works and bring them into your home as guests. Today marks the pre-sale of the speakers alongside the lineup and membership sale of the Season One “Winter” and Season Two “Spring” which will feature Don Bryant & Ann Peebles, Arca, Madlib, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Jessica Pratt, Pastor T.L. Barrett, Terry Riley, Standing on the Corner and more. Season One is set to open on December 21, 2020 and close March 20, 2021. Complete lineup for Season One & Season Two and pre-sale information below.
“We made Oda because live music is a vital part of our lives. We believe all of us should be doing our part to preserve the cultural value of music. Artists are increasingly subjected to unfavorable terms, yet they continue to give us music of life-affirming quality. We’re just trying to build something positive. And our secret mission is to make you listen carefully. If you truly listen, everything will be fine.” – Oda co-founder Nick Dangerfield
Oda artists desire a more personal connection with their audience. Sonic explorers, storytellers and those unable to perform outside their own home are presented with an experimental space for new modes of performance: your living room. Every weekend Oda will broadcast a series of performances by a single artist, while during the week, you’ll hear scheduled performances along with unscheduled and surprise guests, with resident artists performing at various intervals throughout the season. In the end, the artist owns the recording. In between performances, the Oda Speakers will transmit a continuous live high-quality stereo sound from specific locations around the world from a bird sanctuary in Costa Rica to New York’s Tompkins Square Park. You can also play your own music as with any bluetooth speaker.
While the programming will always be varied, one of Oda’s pillars is to support the elders. With less digital literacy and presence online, among many other obstacles, they are at the greatest disadvantage right now. Oda gives musicians the opportunity to perform from their home, helping them continue to share their passion and music. Oda works with the artists to ensure the highest production quality for every transmission. We have a remote live engineer on deck for every performance.
“There’s another kind of concentration when you’re performing in this way. You’re sending it out and the hope is that your honesty is translating. I find that the writing, the music, all of it is enhanced in another kind of way, and it requires delving deeper into the work. It’s exciting to learn something else about yourself as an artist.” – Marjorie Eliot, celebrated New York jazz icon
Oda was founded in 2016 in response to the need for an intimate, personal line of communication – artist to listener, and artist to artist. The catalyst for Oda was born when the artist Phil Elverum (the Microphones, Mount Eerie) announced he wouldn’t be touring in 2016, due to personal circumstances. As a fan, Oda’s founder Nick Dangerfield (whose background is in creating tools for artists) offered to build 50 speakers that would be connected to an app on Elverum’s phone. Whenever he had time, he could play his fans a song live, and it would broadcast in their homes. Oda was built by a community of instrument makers, creatives and curators committed to an environment of focused listening and communication of art, it’s without the noise of the infrastructures we have become accustomed to both digitally and physically
“Oda was born as a solution to allow musicians to perform live from their home and studio, and envisioned as an additional revenue stream, and new creative challenge,” stated Dangerfield. “The intention was never to replace touring or live music, but quite the contrary: the dream was always to bring more live music into our lives. We promise to bring you a varied, world class program of live music performance throughout the week.”
While developing the Oda system, Dangerfield met Perry Brandston, and together they reimagined what Oda could be. Brandston, a sound artist, grew up working in New York institutions like Fillmore East and CBGB, eventually building design systems for clubs such as Save the Robots and working with David Mancuso (The Loft) as well as Giorgio Gomelski (Red Door). Benjamin Zenker of the University of Dresden, a world-leading acoustician, took Brandston’s design and transformed Oda into one of the best sound systems in its class. His reimagining rejects heavy audio filters and brings listeners an honest experience. Inspired by classical musical instruments, Oda is made of simple materials: wood, glass, steel, & cotton. It feels human, not technical.
“You can almost touch the sound, the sound touches you,” commented Brandston. “Cellos make sound the same way. They do exceptionally well in the expressive range of music. A sound that’s dimensional. A sound that makes it feel like the artist is just inches away from you. It’s about the living, breathing presence of musicianship over the robotic hardware of audio reproduction.”
Furniture and fine art designer Anna Karlin lent her expertise in creating the Oda Lighthouse, which operates as the “On-Air” signaling structure. The programming is led by Kristen McElwain, formerly of Red Bull Music Academy. Dangerfield’s vision was further expanded when entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian came on board as the lead investor.
“As a big fan of music from many different genres, I invested in Oda because of their innovative vision in reimagining how we experience live music through new technology – and how inclusive they are with artists from all walks of life,” said Alexis Ohanian, investor and co-founder of Reddit. “I was blown away after my first live listening experience – the Oda speakers create such a transcendent, intimate feeling that brings the music and the artist to life.”
An accompanying Oda App will keep you informed on schedules, volume control, and much more. Oda will never play ads or sell your data. The Oda system doesn’t have a microphone, and they can’t listen to you. In advance of every season, all members will also get a printed program.
Oda also partnered with Wieden+Kennedy, an independent global creative agency, to help create the brand’s identity and the launch campaign, including a series of animated films scored by Eli Keszler and Nate Boyce.
Oda is live.
Oda Pre-Sale
Oda is available for a promotional presale price of $299 and $79 for seasonal membership at Oda.co. After the first 1,000 units are sold the list price will be $399. Each run of the Oda system will be produced in a limited number of units. Oda cares about creating a sustainable platform for artists, and membership pays for meaningful performances fees to participating artists and crew.
Oda “Winter” (Season One) & “Spring” (Season Two) Lineup:
*Subject to Change – Exact Schedule TBA
Andy Bey
Legendary, Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist who, as a four-octave baritone, possesses one of the most unique ranges in the music’s history.
Angel Bat Dawid
Chicago-based composer, clarinetist, singer and “spiritual jazz soothsayer” who has enjoyed global recognition for the potency, prowess and charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing.
Arca
Artist, producer, composer, activist, and queer icon whose era-defining productions for Kanye West, FKA twigs, Björk, Frank Ocean and others set the stage for her own groundbreaking solo recordings.
Beatrice Dillon
London-based artist, producer, sound designer and composer heralded by The Guardian as “the most thrilling new artist in electronic music” and whose debut full-length album, Workaround, is widely touted as one of 2020’s best.
Beverly Glenn-Copeland
Canada-based singer, musician and songwriter whose ’70s and ’80s folk and electronic recordings enjoyed rediscovery and revival by younger audiences in the 2010s and is the subject of an acclaimed 2019 documentary film, Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly-Glenn Copeland Story.
Bradford Cox
Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, guitarist and charismatic front-man and creative engine of the group Deerhunter, heralded by The Guardian as, “one of the great US bands of the century.”
Desire Marea
South African multi-disciplinary artist and co-founder of queer performance collective FAKA whose acclaimed 2020 album Desire is heralded by Pitchfork as “a multi-sensory exploration of the nature of the divine.”
DJ Python & LA Warman
Acclaimed NYC-based electronic music producer whose work merges the club rhythms of reggaeton with the ethereal production textures of ambient and classic IDM. Python’s friend and collaborator LA Warman, is a poet, performer, Lambda Literary Award-ed author and self-described “publisher of art and poetry on flash drives.”
Don Bryant & Ann Peebles
Memphis soul music royalty who’ve been married for 50 years, and collaborated on the classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain” and other essential recordings. Ann retired from public performance a few years ago, while Don’s music career has enjoyed a great revival in recent years.
Drew McDowall
Glasgow-bred artist who grew up in the gangs of ’70s Scotland, collaborating with Psychic TV and becoming a member of Coil in the ’90s, and continues to mine the hallucinatory spaces that exist between reality and celestial otherness with a haunting spirituality.
Jessica Pratt
Singer, songwriter and musician whose stunning work across three acclaimed albums reflects an unerring commitment to intimacy through her voice and guitar.
KeiyaA Chicago-bred, New York-based singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose
work, as featured on her acclaimed 2020 debut Forever, Ya Girl, spans R&B, funk, hip-hop, and obscure Prince covers, and has been lauded by Pitchfork for its soulful, singular sound.
Larry Gold
Classically trained cellist who played on countless soul music classics as part of the string section for Philadelphia International Recordings’ house band MFSB, and has served as the revered string arranger for the Roots, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Brandy & Monica, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West and others.
Madlib
Reclusive hip-hop producer renowned for his classic collaborations with J Dilla, MF Doom, and Freddie Gibbs, myriad one-man-band live instrumental guises, and gremlin exploits as helium-voiced alter ego Quasimoto.
Marjorie Eliot
“Harlem’s secret jazz queen of Sugar Hill,” is a pianist, singer, educator, actress, and writer who for the past 26 years, has hosted live jazz performances at her home every Sunday for anyone who wishes to attend.
the Microphones
Singer, songwriter, and producer Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie) has crafted an unmistakably personal body of work across nearly 25 years of recordings.
Norman Whiteside
Responsible for one of ’70s soul music’s true lost jewels – his group Wee’s album You Can Fly On My Aeroplane – this singer, songwriter and instrumentalist would not enjoy the audience his music merited until the 2000s, when while incarcerated his work was rediscovered and sampled by the likes of Kanye West, Jay Electronica and Frank Ocean and others.
Pastor T.L. Barrett
Southside Chicago-based clergyman and community leader whose elusive 1971 album recorded with an after school program choir, Like a Ship… (Without a Sail), is considered one of the great gospel-crossover masterpieces, and has won fans from members of Radiohead to Kanye West (who has also sampled the Pastor’s music).
Pauline Anna Strom
San Francisco-based electronic music artist whose elusive, haunting 1980s synthesizer recordings as Trans Millenia Consort have been reissued and rediscovered in recent years to great acclaim.
Sarah Davachi
Revered composer, sound artist, scholar of electronic music and recorded media, and one of the pre-eminent contemporary figures and performers in electroacoustic music.
Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez — poet, activist, scholar — was the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books. She is recently featured in the film, Mr. SOUL! (Netflix).
Standing On The Corner
New York City collective that has forged a singular creative path across a series of acclaimed, genre-eluding recordings, and is led by the enigmatic Shamel Cee Mystery, whose production credits include collaborations with Solange and Earl Sweatshirt.
Terry Riley
Legendary composer, musician and pioneer of the Minimalist movement, whose seminal work would introduce new concepts and musical forms to Western composition and fundamentally change the course of 20th Century music.
Zsela
20-something-year-old singer-songwriter with a self-described “200-year-old voice” whose emotive sound has been heralded by the New York Times as, “at once earthly and otherworldly,” and works in close collaboration with Frank Ocean-associate, producer Daniel Aged.
