Missing Live Music? Meet Oda
Before lockdown started, I was a concert regular. Attending a few shows a week was my norm, so when COVID-19 shut everything down, I spent countless hours negotiating refunds with venues and canceling flights I had to cross-country shows and festivals. I found myself mourning the live arrangements I’d never hear, fellow fans I’d never meet, and next-day ringing ears I’d never nurse back to normalcy. It’ll be some time until we’re able to experience the ambiance of a concert, but Oda is here to bring that live experience back, but minus the overpriced drinks and sticky floors.
Spanish artist Nick Dangerfield has been working on Oda since 2016 when he was tasked with helping musician Phil Everlum of the Microphones and Mount Eerie connect with fans while he was unable to tour due to extenuating family matters. Dangerfield says he tried “to create a very direct line of communication between artist and fan, free from all the digital noise and distraction — an immediate line for live sound that would make you feel close to the artist.” With the help of New York sound artist Perry Brandston, and acoustician of The University of Dresden, Benjamin Zenker, Oda has evolved from a simple problem-solving concept into a sonically-superior, expertly-crafted audio experience in the form of speakers.
Attending a few shows a week was my norm, so when COVID-19 shut everything down, I spent countless hours negotiating refunds with venues and canceling flights I had to cross-country shows and festivals. I found myself mourning the live arrangements I’d never hear,
The Oda speakers are definitely a technological feat, but the final product doesn’t appear overly complex or overly designed — in fact, it’s the exact opposite. Made from only wood, steel, glass, and cotton, the speakers evoke a natural, minimalist character that speaks to the raw nature of the sounds that emit from the device. The simple, flat-panel square design allows for “...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,” according to Brandston. Its architecture is said to be inspired by methods and techniques used in luthiery and bookbinding, which produces an audio quality akin to instruments being played live and in their purest form, perfect for immersive listening.
Oda curates live concerts for every day of the year to be streamed directly into the homes of their speaker owners. They divide their programming into seasons, so their picks coincide with winter, spring, summer, and fall. They’ve partnered with “experimentalists, storytellers, and audio pioneers” like Madlib, Arca and Jessica Pratt as a few of their weekend performance artists, and Terry Riley, Larry Gold, and Marjorie Eliot as their resident artists, whose commissioned performances occur spontaneously throughout the week for live, intimate performances from the comfort of home. When an Oda artist isn’t performing, users can use Bluetooth on their everyday devices to play their own favorites too.
With optimistic timelines forecasting live music events to return by Fall 2021 at the earliest, Oda is providing an enduring solution that will have an impact well beyond the pandemic. Its ultimate goal isn’t to replace live music, but to provide an additional outlet for artists to profit and listeners to “let even more music into their lives.”
