Cole Citrenbaum and Jacob Reske are Opia, Yale’s hottest new music duo

I was hardcore jamming to my favorite new song when my friend walked into the room. “You know this is by a Yalie right? Like the kid who sings this is in our grade.” And that’s how it all began.

Cole Citrenbaum ’17 is clean-cut and relaxed as he walks into Willoughby’s right on time. Jacob Reske ’14 is the exact opposite, rushing in 10 minutes later with headphones wrapped around his neck and an apology prepared. Together these two form the band, Opia.

Their first single entitled Falling has blown up, landing them a spot on Spotify’s U.S. Viral Top 50 and Billboard’s Emerging Artists list. I tried my best not to fangirl, so here’s some music to set the mood for The Tab sit down with Opia:

How did you two meet?

Cole: We knew of each other as undergrads, I guess.

Jacob: OK I want to give a slightly different answer. So we’ve done the “how did you meet” question like 30 times, but most of the time it’s been managers or agents so we’ve been slowly condensing our story down –

C: – to like a couple sentences blurb.

J: Truthfully, we met during your Bulldog Days when you came to see A Squared (the electronic a cappella group).

C: That’s actually super true. I was visiting for Bulldog Days and I met a guy at an audition who said, “yeah, let me introduce you to all of the music stuff, my friends are rehearsing right now.” So I saw Jacob and all of his friends in the formative days of A Squared.

J: I remember the song we made that day. It was so bad…

C: Oh, no, I remember thinking you guys were so good! You did Retrograde or something. After that, though, I don’t think we really talked until last year. But I knew that he existed and I dug A Squared. We were actually recording my a cappella group – the Spizzwinks – album and I suggested Jacob because he’s a really good tracker and producer. So I reached out and we ended up hiring him. I was part of the hiring team for the album, so I ended up spending a lot of time with him while we recorded.

J: Right after the Sing Off, I came back to campus and realized that I had this really small profile from being on the show. So people came up to me and said, “oh, you’re an a cappella producer!” And I was like, “uhhhh, interesting!” Then people offered to pay me to record them and I was like, “ooookay!” So for the last year I haven’t had a job, I’ve been recording a cappella groups.

How did you guys actually become a group?

C: We were spending a ridiculous amount of time together recording the Spizzwinks album and I started realizing that Jacob is a real producer! He played all of these beats for me while we were hanging out and they were actually really dope, so I suggested that we write music together. We both happened to be in LA last summer, so after my internship, I would take the city bus across LA to his completely unfurnished apartment. It’s funny because a lot of people think this happened in a music studio –

J: – but at the time it all took place in my empty, stainless steel apartment.

C: I think there was maybe an air mattress, but that was it.

J: And it must have been 105 degrees in there, so we would go at night. We had no air ventilation in the room so we were just sitting in our own sweat. But one night we decided to go get burgers, and what did I buy… was it a cup? Or a fork?

C: Oh yeah! We were really excited because he finally had silverware… But on the weekends we would go up to my house in Ventura and surf in the mornings and record for the rest of the day.

J: It was the dream.

What does Opia stand for?

C: We actually found the word Opia on this Tumblr blog of made-up words called the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. According to the guy who runs the blog, it refers to the intensity, invasiveness and intimacy of eye contact. So it’s when you make eye contact with someone and it feels really invasive but also really nice.

J: Eye sex.

C: Yeah, exactly.

J: But since we named the band Opia, I’ve realized that there are several other bands with the same name. We’re not in a position of indigence or self-righteousness about our name, but there are probably a bunch of Opias out there who are mad at us. To those Opias, we’d like to say, we’re so sorry! We didn’t think this through.

C: Even the album artwork is just similar enough where we could be the same thing. It was also hilarious because we released Falling and two days later they released a song called Still Standing.

Is there a divide of roles for you guys? Like, is one person the singer, the other is the producer, etc.?

J: Well that’s how it usually works, but it’s actually a lot more fluid than that. I’m also a singer and Cole is also a producer, so it’s really really collaborative.

Soooo, is Falling about someone? Or did you guys just pull from your imaginations?

J: No comment.

C: Of course it’s about someone!

J: “I’m not falling for this toxic looove.”

C: We’ve seen a bunch of fan sites where they write the lyrics of the song, and most of them have been completely right, but there was one that was so terrible, we were laughing at it for forever.

Isn’t that crazy? People are going on to random sites and writing your lyrics!

J: Okay, I’m kind of anticipating your follow-up question and am going to find you this thing we got yesterday.

C: Oh my god, yeah! We started getting fan videos, and one of them is literally just a Japanese cartoon with Falling playing in the background. It’s great.

How has this success been? Has anything changed?

J: Well we’ve become assholes, we don’t talk to any of our friends, we show up late for interviews.

C: Haha. I don’t know, it’s just been so weird because literally two weeks ago today, I woke up with a text from one of my friends who told me that our song was on New Music Friday on Spotify. And we were like, what in the world is going on?

J: I didn’t really understand the full weight of it because I’m not really a Spotify guy.

C: I am. When I told him we were on New Music Friday he goes, “oh, that’s cool.” And I was like, “no, you don’t understand.”

What bands/types of music are you guys inspired by?

J: Well, I see the music as very pop because the type of music I listen to is much more… strange? I do listen to more current R&B stuff, but I come from more of a folk music background.

C: I see it more as alternative because I come from a pop background. But that’s what I think makes the music so cool because Jacob is super alternative and I’m super mainstream, so together we make something right in the middle.

So have your phones been going off like crazy from record companies?

C: Yeah… It’s funny because we’ve both been making music for a long time, and for years we’ve been the ones reaching out and trying to promote our stuff. But all of a sudden we’re getting all of these emails from important people, or people who are really involved in the music industry. So that’s been really cool.

J: I just didn’t think this would ever happen to me, to be honest! I’ve released stuff and Cole has released stuff that you put out on Soundcloud that has gone nowhere. You can make a song that you think is the dopest thing in the world, but you really don’t know! A song can fail because people don’t like it, because you don’t promote it correctly, because you released it at the wrong hour of the day, etc. It’s literally anything. The most important thing I’ve learned so far is to separate yourself from the hype. People will be like, it’s the best song ever! And you just have to nod your head and say,”yeah, cool! We like it, we think it’s hot, I’m glad you like it too!” You really have to learn to be more objective about things instead of falling for the hype.

C: We were just really lucky that people heard the song. We sat on Falling for a while; it was done around September. Then we just sent it to a bunch of music blogs and right away, one of them responded, and from there everything just cascaded. And that’s sort of crazy because what made it work could have been something as small as what time we sent that email.

Since you both have a cappella backgrounds, would you say that influences your music at all?

J: Very directly so. All of the instruments except for the guitar are vocal samples. I would take a bunch of them from A Squared, so most of my sample library consists of vocals.

C: He just got really good at taking vocals and manipulating them into the sounds that he wanted.

J: Yeah, but so now that I’m using instruments I love it, because it’s so much easier.

Who sings the main vocals?

J: That would be Cole. I sing all the falsettos. We did this thing where I would sing more of a breathy, low tone and a loud falsetto, and he would do the opposite. There are probably 10 voices singing at once.

Will the rest of your album be in the same vein as Falling?

J: There are several ways to go about it, but I think we’re just going to write what we feel and where are hearts are at. We really don’t want to calculate it.

C: But if we’re writing together, we will probably find ourselves falling into similar patterns. They won’t be the same songs, but they will most likely have the same DNA.

Finally, tell me a fun fact about each of you or something you want your fans to know.

C: I think we should tell a fact about each other.

Good idea.

C: Okay, fun fact about Jacob: he’s obsessed with old video games, especially Lego Island. So what happened is, he found all of the source files for Lego Island and extracted all of the audio and is so hyped on all of these samples. So we’ll be listening to a song and I’ll be like, oh this is so cool! And then I’ll hear something in the background and be like, Jacob is that Lego Island again? Are you kidding me?

J: So, to be clear, I am not using any Lego Island samples. Lego Corporation, please do not sue me! But since Cole always rails on me for using Lego Island, it’s kind of a red herring because if I put the Lego Island shit in there, I sneak so much other stuff in there that he’ll never know about!

C: As long as there’s no Lego Island, I don’t care.

J: Well, a fun fact about Cole is that he was the guitarist for Rebecca Black’s touring band.

C: I just got a call one day and was asked to play at the House of Blues! So obviously I said yes, but I had no idea who the artist was. And when I got there I found out it was Rebecca Black.

Does that mean you got to play to Friday?

C: Yeah, it was so much fun! The band was amazing and so talented, so I felt really happy to be there. I think my favorite story is that we were getting into her car to go to an interview or something to promote the show. And Rebecca goes, should I go in the front seat, or the back seat? And I had no idea how to respond to the question.