Oxis

I’ve become unexpectedly enamoured of this unassuming artist. She’s put out a string of numbered EPs since 2021, but the new Oxis 7 (at just shy of half an hour) is the first that could be mistaken for a short album, mostly because she’s gradually shifting from recording short song-fragments of about 1 minute long to “full-fledged” song efforts lasting about 2 minutes.

I’d describe Oxis’ sound as approx: 30% The xx, 30% early Seefeel (think “Plainsong”), 25% The Field and 15% a dial-up modem from the 90s. If I had to cite a single reference point it would be The Underground Lovers’ Cold Feeling, whose forays into icy robo-krautrock was memorably described by a local critic as “Neu! Order”. These are robotic, synthetic, percussion-driven loopy guitar jams that sound auto-generated rather than composed, over which Oxis, language and breathy, sings typically like she’d fallen asleep at the mic someone just shook her awake - though when she wants to she can be very charismatic, such as on the cover of Stromae’s “Papoutai”: stirring and melodramatic before gradually transforming into a transhuman cyborg.

The cyborg aspect is key. My reference points above are all from the 90s and 00s, but there’s an aspect of Oxis’ approach that seems suggestive of her age and having grown up marinating in 10s pop music, in particular EDM and tropical-pop, which is how her songs frequently devolve into artificial-sounding but very mnemonic loops of her own vocals. But unlike those styles (say, “I Took A Pill in Ibiza”), rather than observing a boundary between vocal performance and arrangement, Oxis’ songs tend to devolve and deliquesce from one state to the other. I’m reminded of the feeling of staring at a well-done AI fake-photo and only gradually perceiving its artificiality.

The approach becomes very explicit (almost on the nose, but endearingly so) on Oxis’ latest gambit of drowsily hallucinating well-known pop songs (from the 00s!) “Mr Brightside” and “Kids” over her existing fragment “Long Sardine”. It’s a bit of a joke, though based on a kernel of serious understanding about the bittersweetness of her sound (which “Long Sardines” exemplifies) and how it unconsciously echoes those kinds of songs (if she was going to choose more covers, the obvious choice would be “Dancing On My Own”). I also like to think she’s signalling that she wants her own songwriting to go and grow, to find a way to make her songs more indelible. At the same time, she’s signalling that she well-understands the most charming aspects of her own craft: of the two covers, I enjoy “Kids” more for the way that, as with “Papoutai”, she gradually sloughs off the shackles of the song she is covering and transmogrifies into a wordless AI siren.

I’m not fully hearing the influences you cite yet… for me I think she sounds very mid 00’s folktronica/indietronica like something from the Morr label.

Realizing her covering Kids and Mr. brightside is the equivalent to MGMT or The Killers covering songs from the early to mid 80’s.

It’s possible that Morr etc didn’t occur to me as a reference point because I have aomehow managed to excise all recollection of that music from my brain.

undeniably ivycore

Xpost: wait! why? There were some really cool aesthetics behind some of the artists in there and shoegaze was a big influence on most of them iirc… the Neu! + Seefeel middle point makes sense for both worlds I guess.

Anyways, I like what I heard from her. Thanks for the heads up.

yeah this is great. can’t think of a folktronica act i’d compare it to. the vibe i got, without investigating it too much, was that the artist grew up listening to emo, and was channeling that kind of approach through various beat-oriented soundscapes. and i’m really into it

it really is very ivycore

Xpost: wait! why? There were some really cool aesthetics behind some of the artists in there and shoegaze was a big influence on most of them iirc… the Neu! + Seefeel middle point makes sense for both worlds I guess.

Anyways, I like what I heard from her. Thanks for the heads up.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, July 1, 2025 2:52 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not a deliberate thing - there are entire years for which I struggle to rememeber what I was listening to at the time.

Yes I feel like emo is also a likely influence, as well as billie eilish probs.

also hear more than a little postal service. idk, maybe that’s accidntel/incidntel

Maybe she could cover “The Dream of Evan and Chan” next - she can do the telephone ringing as well.

lol but also kinda amazingly, Oxis has now released an EP called ‘Sardine Tin’ featuring the above two covers but also covers of Bon Iver’s ‘Skinny Love’, Antonio Jobim’s ‘Aguas de Marco’ and Daughter’s ‘Youth’, all over the bedrock of the “Long Sardine” instrumental.

It really makes a case for her as a vocalist and interpreter - she really goes for it on “Skinny Love” - and I had already thinking there was maybe a bossa nova vibe to her music which the Jobim cover makes explicit, but I’m now also really curious about the thinking behind the project. It now becomes apparent that the additional words “and you caused it” which she added to the chorus of “Kids” was a link to “Youth”, and it made me wonder if she is finding or attributing something specific in these songs. I’d never thought about it in these terms but I suppose “Kids” can be seen as examining the nature of artistry and influence, how influence works and how (as mark s used to say) it can work backwards - “control yourself, take only what you need from it.”