Not much of Toronto-bred Nigerian artist ODIE is made public. His social media feeds are stripped back to the absolute bare minimum. His SoundCloud profile is built like a finely groomed portfolio – minimalist, cohesive, and sharply focused. The best way to get a grasp of ODIE’s personality has been through his very honest songwriting, leaving his emotions in the music. ODIE does his best connections through the music, his writing almost sounds therapeutic at times, as if there might not be another outlet for him. After building a healthy buzz a few years back on the strength of some very strong singles, ODIE returns in full with his full length project, Analogue.

In what ODIE is calling “a prelude,” Analogue is the beautiful summation of four years of work. The 10-track project is a mosaic of sounds and feelings, ranging anywhere from the electronic pulsing of Midnight, to the swooning love ballad of North Face, one of the project’s leading singles. ODIE has cited Kid Cudi as a key influence to his music, which makes itself apparent in pockets of this project, but not in an overly aggressive, carbon copy type of way. Their voices have similar qualities to them, a low melodic drone at times, and ODIE takes cues from Cudi’s pitter-patter cadence, but ODIE re-purposes the lessons he’s learned from Cudi’s music and expands on the key principles. ODIE weaves through vocal ranges, adding multiple backing layers of different octaves creating a spacey, full texture to many of the tracks found on Analogue. There is an abundance of emotion throughout this project, found in the level of craft in the production, ODIE’s vocal delivery, as well as his writing. ODIE sums the feeling of the project on the track Noise, with the lyrics “music saved my life, music made my life” – you can feel it.

Check out the stunning project below. It remains to be seen if there is a second project on the way, but with ODIE describing the project as a prelude, only time will tell if Analogue foreshadows to a later album.