Demo: You use the term “Industrial Surfgaze” to describe your music, how did this come about and do you think there is any risk of being pigeonholed by applying a genre tag to your music?

Odonis Odonis: That term started out as more of a joke than anything, sounded pretty ridiculous to us but it seemed to stick. You are kind of forced to find words to describe yourself when putting together a press release. I am not really worried about genre tags, I think the diversity of the music speaks for itself.

D: Since 2011’s Hollandaze, there’s been a shift in your music to a much darker, harsher direction, is there any reason for this?

OO: Not really. We wrote a lot of the tracks for our Better EP around the same time Hollandaze was released. Soft Boiled Hard Boiled was written 3 or 4 years before that. SBHB actually has some of the softest, most melodic music we have released. Though after supporting Hollandaze we were pretty broke and pissed off for a number of reasons, so there might be a bit of that in there.

D: How did the split EP with Lotus Plaza come about?

OO: Palmist, the label that released it, hooked that up. It was part of a split series with a lot of great bands. It actually features songs from the record we are about to release.

D: How was touring with METZ?

OO: Pretty great though we saw Hayden’s butt way more than we needed to. Those guys are really pro and set a live standard that we had to meet every night. I think it really helped us become a stronger live band.

D: How does Toronto’s scene compare to the other places you’ve travelled?

OO: Toronto is great because is doesn’t have a lot of the competitive nature that other music communities’ carry. For the most part people are willing to play together, tour together, and collaborate. A lot of the bands here take it pretty seriously too, so you have a lot of strong contenders popping up. On top of that it is very musically diverse. Sometimes I feel really lucky to be in this city.

D: Has playing live had an impact on your song writing?

OO: Yes and no. On one hand you want to write music that will come off strong in a live scenario, like a powerful sub-noise or a tense pulsing rhythm. On the other hand I think each scenario requires a different state of mind, independent of each other. When you are writing you are usually trying to create something new, when you are performing you are recalling a song-specific feeling or moment and going through the motions.

D: In previous interviews, you’ve described how your songs typically are based off of Dean Tzenos’ home recordings, how do the songs evolve into Odonis Odonis songs?

OO: Dean will show us an idea for a riff, melody, beat, or entire song. Sometimes we will take that to our rehearsal space and feel it out and see it where it can go. We have also exchanged ideas between our own home studios, just passing the .wav files back and forth. It usually gets fleshed out until it feels right. Sometimes we only need to change a bit of the structure and other times it’s a complete overhaul.

You can catch Odonis Odonis performing on the second night of this year’s Wavelength Music Festival, on Friday, February 14th at Adelaide Hall. More information can be found here.