With Planets and Gods, Ukrainian artist Axxi Oma delivers an immersive debut EP that bridges myth, memory, and migration through a unique synthesis of rhythm and texture. Crafted during her residency at La Guarimba in Amantea, a coastal town in southern Italy, the record captures a distinct cultural alchemy: the collision between the artist’s post-industrial electronic sensibility and the ancient, folkloric atmosphere of Calabria. The result is an experimental yet deeply emotional sonic world, where dark electronica intertwines with field recordings, legends of mermaids, and echoes of the sea.
The EP unfolds as a conceptual journey through a fictional non-religious culture, where the divine and the human merge in ritualistic soundscapes. From the opening moments, the listener is drawn into a space of elemental balance — between chaos and order, organic and synthetic, body and cosmos. Each track seems to orbit a central gravitational pull: rhythm as a living entity, and the synthesizer as a storytelling device.
The rhythmic structure of Planets and Gods plays a crucial role in defining its narrative arc. Rather than relying on predictable percussive grids, Axxi Oma builds her beats with irregular pulses and shifting time signatures that feel closer to breath or tide than to machine precision. The kick drums are often subdued, allowing sub-bass oscillations and glitchy percussive fragments to form an evolving rhythmic ecosystem. On tracks like “Mermaids” and “Hunters,” these percussive elements evoke both tribal ritual and cybernetic propulsion, balancing organic groove with mechanical fragmentation. The result is hypnotic — rhythm becomes a meditative tool, leading the listener through dreamlike transitions between tension and release.
Equally striking is the synth design, which acts as the EP’s emotional core. Axxi Oma’s synthesis techniques draw from a palette that feels tactile and cinematic. She sculpts sounds that oscillate between light and density, using analog warmth and digital sharpness to reflect the contrast between myth and modernity. The synth layers shimmer like refracted light on water, while distorted arpeggios and granular textures form the sonic architecture of a world in flux. On “White Hole,” one of the EP’s most atmospheric moments, swelling pads and submerged drones suggest both cosmic vastness and deep-sea immersion. The track’s harmonic progression feels suspended between melancholy and transcendence, as if capturing the moment before a celestial body implodes.
The atmosphere of Planets and Gods is perhaps its most defining element. Throughout the record, Axxi Oma crafts a sense of spatial depth that blurs the line between interior and exterior sound. Field recordings from Amantea — the sea, the wind, distant voices — are woven seamlessly into the production, grounding the experimental electronics in a physical environment. These textures transform the EP into a kind of auditory mythology: a place where the natural and the synthetic coexist in harmony. The listener is not merely hearing music but inhabiting a sound world — one that feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic, intimate and infinite.
Vocals, sung in both Ukrainian and English, appear as spectral presences rather than dominant leads. They emerge from the mix like invocations, processed and looped to create choral layers that hint at forgotten rituals. Axxi Oma’s voice becomes another instrument within the composition, carrying emotional weight through tone and texture rather than explicit narrative.
As a debut, Planets and Gods stands as a highly accomplished and cohesive work, revealing Axxi Oma’s precision as a producer and her sensitivity as a storyteller. It reflects not only her musical background but also her lived experience — as an artist displaced by war, finding resonance in new cultural contexts and transforming them into sound. The influence of her time in Berlin and her performances across Europe can be felt in the EP’s blend of experimental production and emotional directness. Yet the essence of the record remains rooted in place — in Amantea’s legends, in the sound of its sea, and in the creation of a culture that, though fictional, feels profoundly human.
With Planets and Gods, Axxi Oma establishes herself as one of the most intriguing emerging voices in the European experimental electronic scene. Her debut EP is not just a collection of tracks but an auditory mythology, one that invites listeners to traverse sound as landscape and rhythm as ritual. It’s a work of high artistic quality, and we are proud to host it on our webzine — a release that reminds us how deeply electronic music can resonate when it transcends borders, languages, and realities.