OKLAHOMA CITY — The early weeks of the year have a way of blending together into one big liminal blob of hours and days where it can be tough to know even when something began or how long you’ve been zoning out.
The days are mostly dark and even the sunlight hours tend to be overcast and cold. Conversations feel disjointed, the walls between waking and daydreaming feel thin, and the threads connecting it all feel tenuous and fleeting.
We all feel that way in January, right?
Well, if you could distill all of that dark winter confusion, in all its strangeness and charm, down into audio, I’ll bet it would sound like exmaxhina.
One of the most prolific and productive producers in the OKC scene, Arman Sikder uses the moniker exmaxhina (pronounced like “ex machina,” the classic Greek theatrical device) to create dark, glitchy, deconstructed lo-fi pieces in the style that’s become something of a Spotify and YouTube staple.
But while so many of the cookie-cutter “lo-fi beats to study to” playlists can feel pre-packaged and toothless – like someone just chopped up some tracks and drowned them in reverb – exmaxhina has a particular knack for reminding you that this style can be evocative and even soulful.
After a steady flood of albums, singles, EPs, and more over just the past few years – all released through Sikder’s own Distant Ether label – his newest album “Phantom of the Ether” may well be his best example yet of just how human all of this digital deconstruction can feel.
A lot of that can be attributed to his wholehearted focus on vocal samples.
Rather than relegating human voices to far-off, fleeting passersby, he puts them front and center, even opening the whole album with a single, relatively dry human voice imploring you to “go a little further.”
That embrace of clear human vocals continues throughout, placing something real and obviously organic at the center of the disorienting swirl of sub-octave basslines and distorted pianos, offering the listener a kind of conceptual anchor to hold onto, even as the human voices themselves are chopped and reorganized.
Everything feels genuinely deconstructed here, less like a digital producer just dropping samples haphazardly into a program and more like some kind of apocalyptic disaster swept through a completed song, leaving only the rearranged bones and tatters to piece it back together.
Ahead of the album’s release, Sikder told me that his intention with “Phantom of the Ether” was to create something “beautiful yet ominous,” and there’s definitely an air of tragedy and foreboding hiding in the bowels of this album like the opera-haunting figure that seems to have inspired its title.
But there’s also something revelatory every time you’re able to piece together and decipher a melody or latch onto a theme or a groove. Every little hook that your ears find feels like a personal discovery.
It’s dark, yes, but it’s digging through at darkness and revealing the little flashes of light and color buried beneath.
But even for all of the enigma and deconstruction flowing through the tracks on “Phantom of the Ether,” it should still be pointed out that this stuff grooves.
The lo-fi genre has always been built on chopped, manipulated R&B beats, but Sikder opens them up here and really lets them carry these tracks with some seriously grooving drum-and-bass foundations throughout.
Too many of Sikder’s lo-fi contemporaries are actively trying to make their music more ignorable and less engaging, aiming squarely for study sessions or background music. Often, that means softening the bass, weakening the melodies, and mixing any voices or vocals into an afterthought.
“Phantom of the Ether” feels like a rejection of all that.
This isn’t meant to be played in the background while you focus on something else. It may even be the opposite.
It’s designed to help you set your focus aside and put your brain away for a while to dig down through all the swaying, mysterious layers of beat and melody, always coaxing you to “go a little further.”
Which, of course, makes it something of a perfect soundtrack to these strange winter months when the days melt together and your mind takes an extended vacation.
It’s disorienting and compellingly odd, but it’s also genuinely, relatably human.
“Phantom of the Ether” by exmaxhina drops January 11th exclusively on the Audius streaming service, and February 8th on all other streaming services through Distant Ether Records.
January 11th will see exmaxhina performing the album in its entirety at OKC’s Mycelium Gallery to celebrate the release.
For more, follow @exmaxhina on Instagram and visit distantether.com and myceliumgallery.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
