The Parisian visual artist and composer Aude Van Wyller, also known as Oï les Ox, makes an evasive kind of electronic music. This is on full display on Al les Axes, her second full-length record, which is out now on the London label Constructive. It’s a disorienting set of music, one that balances a dreamlike quality with a certain sonic severity. It’s an appropriate soundtrack to our psycho digital lifestyle. It’s also the result of a set of conceptual music-making processes that we were excited to learn more about. Our email interview—and the album, in full—is below.

"Mi-air, Mi-eau" starts with a phone alert notification. Why did you choose to kick off the record with that sound?

It is a chance meeting. I intended to record the sound of my elevator first, because I decided that every record I will do will start with a different elevator sound. So to me, it actually starts more with an elevator sound. This one was appealing because the mechanical sound of doors closing reminded me of a voice. I could really hear a robot hum in it. When trying to catch it, my phone rang. I kept it, for it shows how we get distracted from a given task and how clumsy it is when you want to record something and forget to put your mobile in silent mode. 

I also like the sentence it creates and its rhythm. I think I read from Michel Chion that Godard said it is important to keep the parasites of a sound recording because it hints at your time and place, for instance the far noise of an airplane. This sound of notification is very common these days, so it may give information about the year of production. I think James Ferraro also used a messaging alert in his Far Side Virtual album from 2011, saying later that it is a sort of an impressionist take transposed to now, capturing yourself hearing at interconnected realities, close to saturation.

Do your everyday interactions with contemporary technology factor into how you think about making music and producing poetry?

Yes, I think, but more as surroundings than being self-conscious about it. I use automatic writing, even if I cut it a lot to find sounds and rhythms and structure it later, and themes about technology seem to come back often. Maybe also because I like to learn about systems of writing, from alphabet, duplication, printing, to programs, tape etc … I am interested in their gaps of translation, their malfunctions, errors, holes or deformations in writing. I also like tautology, and to describe what I am doing while I am doing it: what I use, which object ... So the listener or the viewer can do a double take on it, link it, and tell if there is already a difference (is it real-time or is it happening?). 

Since I use different recording systems and musical instruments—amplified, virtual—I describe how I deal with it, and somehow it refers to how we can be lost among different sources, objects, tasks, networks. It is comical to find ourselves in our own trap of wires, in front of the mysteries of their hidden circuits while it should be a prosthesis that makes our life easier.

How did you approach song structure on this new record? I'm curious in particular about some of the longer tracks.

On the last one Crooner qui coule sous les clous (The Death of Rave/Primordial Void, 2020) I used different sound takes that I stored and edited to fit a narration and used instrumentals as landscapes when a character enters. For AI les Axes, I had no such goal and wanted to play first on the gesture to build the structure: what I can actually perform in one take without editing or the less possible. I had been playing with controllers and saw what I was able to launch. I wanted a more sensitive and attentive construction. So I had this technical boundary I stuck to, but I noticed it was a necessity to have a long developmental process again.

On Crooner, it was long because it's a collection of disconnected sounds, organized by collage. I had to build transitions that lead to some non-logical associations. With AI, it was because I was creating an evolution from the few elements I had in the sampler grid. Also I found it too straight to share an edit of what I was playing live. I wanted to play live first, like when you have acoustic instruments and no multitrack recording device. On Crooner, I assembled everything but could not redo it, because it was already written this way. I could sing live along it, which is also an option, but these days I am looking for a more modular structure to go with the words. I don’t want to recite anymore but memorize some parts and play them through patches that can always react differently.

About long songs, it is something I like the most as a listener because it feels paradoxical. We have been trained to use the radio edit format to listen for efficient melodies and clear structures, so when instruments and lyrics don’t follow this structure, whether it uses the vocabulary of the pop songs, for instance a verse/chorus structure transforming into a digression, I like this hybridity. I like progressive punk songs for instance. I also like to find spoken-word poetry in electronic sequencing … When a figure is calling you while your attention is maybe flowing away. The lead voice can also dissolve in repetition or a choir.

Do your songs ever start with words?

I usually have a bunch of texts waiting to find their music. It is the same for the instrumentals. I record a lot of musical ideas—or patching sessions and loop research—that are waiting to be composed. I think it is a mutual adaptation. The text helps find the structure of the music while the text has not been specifically written for the music. 

How did drum and bass and jungle music influence you on this new record?

I use a sample of it on the third track, “Underscore.” I feature the e-reading of a URL that leads to a YouTube music video. That’s an example of a double-take I was speaking about earlier: I featured the URL of the video and the sound of it. I also featured other samples of videos in this track: I took it during a session of diving through YouTube, opening all the tabs, and making a sample with all the sources. I just recorded the internal sound of my computer. That’s why there is a drum and bass sample there, but I am not a specialist or a usual listener of this style, so I don’t think it has influenced me. Again, I like to produce chance meetings.

What is the ideal live setting for your new music?

I wish to read a text acappella in a subway’s staircase alongside a tap dancer and an ondes-martenot player so the people can listen to it on their path from different stages without expecting it.

What kind of music have you been listening to for fun lately?

I am not sure about what fun means, if it is fun music or that I would put it on just for fun. I think music misses a lot of humor or irony and can take itself too seriously. So I like some projects with irony or humor inside, whether I am not distant from it at all: for instance Kathleen Semiotics, Picky Picnic, Akira Umeda, Eric Frye have it. It’s hard for me to have a distance in music (like, literally: I don’t appreciate putting on background music—even if I am interested in the atmosphere of listening that can produce ambient music). And the music these days that usually puts me in a bright mood is Matt Robidoux, Jon Hassell, Wally Badarou, Bob Van, UwuQi… 

The only moment I put it on for fun maybe is karaoke: Even a very serious romantic song can be turned into stand-up. I am into cold wave electronic music usually when I don’t dig other genres, so it’s a melancholic music, mostly odd. These days it is more A. Gethsemani, James K, Heith, and Ben Babbitt. Maybe I am not listening to music for fun actually! I mean it’s not that I am so sad, it is just that I think it is a serious matter, even when I am dancing, I am enjoying it but I am concentrated.

Are you optimistic about the future of creativity?

Yes. It’s hard to answer without speaking generally, I think it’s hard to guess such a question, but I do have hope, even when I find I have nothing to express or I am discovering things less. I think expression is so inherent to human beings, it never disappears—even in times of sideration, silence, and even in front of worlds conceived by duplication systems. I think  liberalism, imperialism, and new-fascist states are forces of standardization that rule access to creativity (your own, or others) and critical interpretation, but I am always confident in how these systems develop necessities to express, reflect about, or escape them.

Sure, we can talk about the death of cultural mediations that used to be creative and nourishing and embrace other models. I think we can make a place for utopia in the establishment even if it is very hard or if a lot has been destroyed, by cultivating links to community (even a global one) and by searching for sources of diversity and knowledge. It is easy to say in times of war, because a lot of the individual's memory is being erased by killing, but still we can hope for ferments of expression in this darkness. I think a movie like Sans Soleil by Chris Marker shows it very well.