There’s a warmth that emanates from Oscar Davey-Wraight — better known by his producer name, Opiuo — like bright sunlight flowing in through a window on a cold day in the city. It’s the kind of warmth that makes one look out that window at all the people and their lives and understand how much capacity for love and warmth exists within each person. This realization creates a kind of faith that transcends basic religious ideation and forces people to look inward and find god within themselves, the kind of god that compels them to dance. Every person on this Earth is trying to make sense of this existence and no single individual has the answers. It’s what makes living and being alive so beautiful. Everyone is just dancing through time and space, searching for meaning and warmth.
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Opiuo’s music sounds like this beautiful endeavor. Vital and bouncing, it reverberates through your ribcage, courts the god within you and forces you to dance, arms outstretched like some prayer to your own magnificence. This feeling was on full display during Opiuo’s sold-out Red Rocks performance this past May. It wasn’t just any show. The artist brought a full orchestra with him and conducted them through reimagined versions of his most well-known songs and deep cuts alike. The performance was recorded and released as a live album in late November titled Opiuo and the Opulent Orchestra and is also now on YouTube in full.
Following the release of the live album, Davey-Wraight sat down with 303 Magazine to discuss finding balance in life as an international performer, the joy found in the fickle nature of creation, organizing an entire orchestra and much more.
Davey-Wraight has been immersed in electronic music since he was a kid. Although he moved to Australia when he was around 20, he grew up in New Zealand. There, his parents and their friends would put on festivals showcasing the early emergence of New Zealand electronic music. He described these festivals as “really cool thing[s] to see as a kid, all the adults dancing.” These early brushes with a wide variety of electronic music had a lasting effect on him and he began experimenting with making music of his own in his mid-teens. “I think I was around 14 or 15 when I played my first DJ set,” he said.
At this time and for many years after, Davey-Wraight considered making music just a hobby, a way to express himself and have fun with his friends. Still, he immersed himself in the culture, describing going to festivals known as the Gathering that showcased everything from drum and bass to psych-trance and traveling between states because “every state had its own genre.” He described his devotion as “religious,” his local CD store his place of worship. He jumped at every chance he had to DJ at friends’ parties which solidified their bond. In his quest to consume as much electronic music as possible, he inevitably began to internalize it all and eventually started truly developing a sound of his own, stepping out of the hobby realm onto the path to making music his career.
Opiuo’s music is very distinct. It’s crisp and clean and bright with a unique bouncing funk designed to get crowds moving. There are songs such as “On Your Side,” which is sweet and ethereal like rolling mist. Then there are songs like “Sneakers,” an undeniable banger that threatens to overload the senses. He said the development of his sound wasn’t intentional but a result of the subconscious pushing its way to the forefront. He said that to this day, he just “make[s] what [he] want[s] to hear.” But what he wants to hear is a result of years spent studying the genre as closely as he could.
He described going to drum and bass shows and wondering what it’d sound like slower. He’d go to trance shows wondering what’d happen if they picked the tempo up. In his electronic adventures, Davey-Wraight eventually happened upon a certain artist who would profoundly affect the development of Opiuo’s sound: Dave Tipper.
Tipper, as he’s best known to the public, is one of the most important and influential artists working in EDM today. His music exists in a genre all its own, trippy, funky and esoteric. Davey-Wraight believes that he subconsciously internalized Tipper’s music which then informed how Davey-Wraight created the “bounce” found in his own. He says it’s funny to look back at those days almost 20 years ago, looking up at the stage as Tipper did his thing. They’re now “great friends,” he said, a sentiment that puts forth the idea of things coming “full circle.”
In those 20 years, Davey-Wraight’s career has grown and evolved to the point where he’s now one of the most sought-after non-mainstream EDM artists working today. He said he considers himself “lucky,” not only for the career he’s had but also because he’s been able to build a stable balance between his life as an international DJ and his home life. He currently lives in Australia with his wife and two kids and describes their life as “normal,” something rarely found by artists who travel the world.
In his long career, Davey-Wraight didn’t always think of the future, preferring to live each day at a time, taking life as organically as possible. “I’ve just been on this ride,” he said. It wasn’t until he had kids that he really started thinking about “mortality and the future and where [he is] now.” This change in how he looks at how life unfolds allowed him to recognize a certain lesson or approach when it comes to creation. He believes that too much control or too much focus on how something is supposed to be can end up actually hindering the creative process, saying, “There’s an infinite amount of directions something can go in.” If you try to control where things are going too much, you may not like where you end up. To that point, however, he mentioned how hard relinquishing control can be when an artist is trying to push toward a certain vision. Whatever your creative approach, Davey-Wraight said, “You have to be true in it.”
All these lessons and this life lived eventually led to Opiuo headlining a sold-out Red Rocks show with a full orchestra in May. He’d done an orchestra show before in 2018, an experience he said “showed [him] his worth.” It was a great success but added extra pressure to putting the next one together. He said, “I think that the biggest challenge is, for better or worse, now I’ve got this reputation of having to push the boundary, which is great, but I think that’s for myself, too. That’s what I do for myself: push my own boundary.”
Davey-Wraight worked with Grammy-winning musician Tom Hagerman to arrange the Red Rocks show, who helped marry “the organic and the electronic.” The inspiration for the show came from Davey-Wraight’s belief that seeing an orchestra is the “ultimate musical experience,” and he wanted to reimagine his own music to elicit that feeling. This led to a careful curation when picking which tracks would be played. He wanted a seamless feel to make the audience feel as if they were being swept away on some great journey. He chose some of his most popular songs, like “Jelly” and “Bam Bam,” and interspersed them with deeper cuts, such as “Endless Dream,” in order to achieve this effect.
The way Davey-Wraight described being on that stage conducting sounded almost spiritual, zen-like. He spoke about how the whole day leading up to the show was about intense focus and meticulous planning, making sure everything was in its perfect place. “Fast forward to walking on stage and you’ve got to remove everything you expect and just hope for the best because you can do it. They can do it and you can’t control that. You can influence them by helping look at them and direct them. Then the audience will take what they want from it and the production will do what it’s going to do.” It’s a balancing act between knowing and being ready for what’s coming next while also giving yourself over to the fullness of the current moment.
He described the experience as one of the most powerful but beautiful of his life and described a rather heavy “come down” following the show. He said he couldn’t listen to recordings or truly allow himself to reflect on the experience until about a month later, as it took so much of him to pull off. But once he finally listened back, he became truly proud of what he’d achieved, allowing himself to appreciate that his hard work paid off and feel prepared for whatever was coming next.
Finally, Davey-Wraight shared some of his personal philosophy. He said, “I really wish the best for the world. I wish the best for everyone. I really want people to wish the best for each other, too, and to encourage each other and remove the things that might hamper someone else’s experience or success. You really should support each other. Because when you do that, you flourish too.” He went on to say, “I believe strongly that it’s a very, very short period of time we’re here. I don’t believe in anything afterward. And I just think this is it, and we’re gonna go for it and leave a mark, not in terms of wanting to be remembered and get a big plaque on a big tombstone. Just make your biggest mark and whether people know that was you who did that thing, that doesn’t matter. You impact people without realizing.”