Odonis Odonis
The brainchild of Toronto, Ontario multi-instrumentalist/filmmaker Dean Tzenos, Odonis Odonis began in 2010 as a noisy fusion of shoegaze, surf, garage, and punk before transforming into a hard-edged industrial act. This darker, starker side to their music began to emerge on 2014's Polaris award-nominated Hard Boiled Soft Boiled and came to the fore on later albums such as 2017's politically tinged No Pop, which made the most of Tzenos' sardonic viewpoint and sneering vocals.
While Tzenos was growing up, his older sisters introduced him to '80s and '90s alternative rock such as the Jesus and Mary Chain, Big Black, and the Pixies. He put those influences to use with Ten Kens, a band he formed in 2003 as an art school student. Ten Kens signed to FatCat Records and released their 2008 self-titled debut album before Tzenos left the group. Around that time, he also broke up with his girlfriend and lost his job as a computer animator. To recuperate, he spent much of 2009 recording on his own. Tzenos converted his den into a home studio and recorded dozens of demos within a few months. Inspired by the name of his friend Adonis Adonis, he christened the project Odonis Odonis.
In May 2011, Odonis Odonis' debut single was "Busted Lip” and the lineup expanded to include drummer/vocalist Jarod Gibson and bassist/vocalist Denholm Whale. That June, Tzenos traveled to Vancouver to record with Black Mountain's Colin Stewart and the New Pornographers' Kurt Dahle and Kathryn Calder. The following month, a split single with Lotus Plaza (aka Deerhunter's Lockett Pundt) arrived. Odonis Odonis' debut album, Hollandaze, arrived that November and kept the lo-fi feel of Tzenos' original demos. The Better EP, which featured the band's first recordings as a trio, was released in April 2013. A year later, the results of Tzenos' Vancouver sessions were released as Hard Boiled Soft Boiled, a set of songs split into an abrasive, industrial-inspired first half and a lush second half informed by dream pop and the album's acclaim included a nomination for that year's Polaris Music Prize.
Odonis Odonis resurfaced in 2016 on Felte with Post Plague, a stark, synth-driven set inspired by science fiction and 21st century narcissism that highlighted the band's industrial leanings. Tzenos and company went even further in this direction with the following year's No Pop, which used the name of an anti-commercial music movement as the title of its moody forays into darkwave and industrial. While touring in support of the album, the band continued to write and record, and released the Reaction EP in April 2019.
In 2021, the project became the duo of Whale & Tzenos who were forced to work completely from home for the first time and spawned Spectrums, a compilation of tracks made during social limitations brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. 2023 sees the collaborative EP ICON featuring noise rock mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers, electronic experimentalist TOBACCO, post-punks ACTORS, industrial pop project Patriarchy, avant poppers SUUNS and more.