20.12.24—Oda at Thank You For Clapping

In December 2024 we spent a few weeks building speakers with our dear friend Nick Dangerfield and his New York studio, @odaislive. By the end of it the panels were hanging from the studio ceiling, and on December 12 we opened the doors so people could hear them for the first time.

Oda started in 2016, when Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie wasn't touring and Nick built a small batch of speakers so he could play live straight into his fans' homes. Since then the idea has moved from broadcasting musicians to broadcasting places. Oda puts microphones in ecosystems they want to help protect and streams the sound live, around the clock.

The panels are made from paper honeycomb and fabric, and they're very light. Rather than pushing sound in one direction, the whole surface vibrates, so the sound spreads through the room more like an acoustic instrument than a speaker. They come in soft, organic shapes and different colours, and hanging together they look a bit like a giant mobile. The ones in our studio were all built by hand here in Copenhagen.

They're currently connected to the Macaw Sanctuary in Costa Rica, land that has grown back from cattle pasture into forest over about 35 years. There are now more than 350 bird species there, along with bats, frogs and insects. Mornings bring the dawn chorus, the afternoons are busy with birds, and after dark it shifts to frogs and crickets. Because of the time difference, their night often lands in our morning, so a day in the studio can start with frogs from the other side of the world.

What makes it more than a nice sound is the model behind it. Through what Oda calls Fair Trade Sound, the people looking after the land are paid for the sound it produces, and the audio feeds into bioacoustics research that follows how the ecosystem is doing. At a time when most nature sound online is looped, cleaned up or generated, it feels good to listen to something real that also helps keep a place intact.

And then there's the fact that it's live. You're not playing a recording of a forest, you're listening in on one while it goes about its day. It carries on whatever you're doing, and somehow that's calming. It's hard to explain until you've sat with it for a while.

The panels still hang permanently in a few different constellations around the studio. Come by, listen, and we'll happily tell you more.

Thanks to Nick for letting us be part of it.