YXO

What is it that urges one to imagine the tropics when listening to YXO? Perhaps the answer lies in the combination of sounds that create an atmosphere of relaxation and holidays and trigger visions of sunny horizons. One could even envisage the author being settled comfortably in an armchair when composing. The music however would not be capable of raising the aforementioned emotions had it been sloppy or careless. The author borrows terms such as dreamwave and retrosynth to categorize his music and for good reason: the soft music waves are imbued with nostalgia and warm pulsating memories, casting light from the ‘polaroid snapshots’ of sounds. The title could be deciphered by reading it in Cyrillic (ухо (rus.) – the ear) and it would be, in all its simplicity, very fitting to the aesthetic of YXO. One could also read the title as a set of symbols pointing to something rather obscure (which is often reinforced by using additional East Asian characters). In such a case the meaning gets lost in a playful geometry and everyone is welcome to his or her own interpretation. The author quite aptly describes YXO as “dreamwave since 1987”, suggesting that life is like a warm mirage that caresses one’s face and is only present here and now. 

Povilas Vaitkevičius