Selected Albums ✨
Skyriser
Fall 2017
Maxo’s 2017 follow-up to Chordslayer, Skyriser explores darker, heavier, and more frenetic territory than its predecessor. Meant to deepen his connection with more dance-oriented music, Skyriser hones in on a more textural experience. The EP released digitally and physically in October of 2017 on Japanese label, TREKKIE TRAX, and brought Maxo abroad the following year on a short guest tour across Japan with label-mate Foxsky, and the TREKKIE TRAX crew. Skyriser features 3 remixes from Tomggg, Carpainter and TORIENA, and art and design by @yungslav_
Clearly VGM, videogame music, is an influence. But alongside this, infused with it, is an almost outlandish experimentalism, which results at all times in bold dynamic eruptions. The overall intensity of 'Tears In The Wind', for instance, how buzzes abrasively, its bass scowling and gonna-blow, how the chords at times (e.g. around 2:39) chromatise with rapid ascension through semitones, and how cuts in the music itself create these sudden jumps through negative space, literally startling your brain as it attempts to react (0:58); similarly at 0:29 in 'Dependent' the unexpected rush of space into ears is then counteracted with stumbling staccato sound. There's the unforeseen switch in 'Kite' from intense rainbow synths to playroom xylophones (1:05), plus its mad wobbling sounds from about 1:55. Or simply the chord progression itself in 'Grow Wings', a beacon of composition with its breakcore beats, glitching electronics and smooth subtle and sparingly used vocal samples. Dynamics, knowing how to play with sound as much as when to create an absence of it for maximum effect, seems to be a Maxo forte. ~ YES/NO Music
Chordslayer
Spring 2015
Maxo’s April 2015 EP, Chordslayer garnered worldwide attention as his first larger release on the heels of his success as an electronic artist. It’s considered by many to be a benchmark example of digital fusion, an essential future bass EP, and a pioneering thread to modern day hyperpop. Chordslayer was mastered by Gabe Liberti, features meesh on ‘Sunset BB’, and was released on Anamanaguchi’s now-defunct netlabel, NHX.
Released alongside the EP is the exhaustively chord-displaying, interactive visual website designed by Maxo, Jeremy Abel, George Brower, and Neil Cline.
His latest release is called Chordslayer, and true to its name and his style, Maxo slays through these chords with aplomb, tickling the synthetic ivories to open up the harmonies and destabalize their root notes. It’s a pretty thrilling listen that’s made even more thrilling by its own dedicated website, which details in real-time each and every chord change: G#maj9, Amaj9/C, Gsus13, Cmin11, G#min7add11, G7, Bsus9, G#9, Ebmin7/Db — all of your favorites make appearances on this bad boy. Even B! ~ Mr P // tinymixtapes
Chordslayer is an explosion of a colors and a splattered kaleidoscope of bright neon paint over blank white objects. Maxo unleashes unadulterated happiness, infinite youth, large-mouthed kids, and energetic beats that'll suck us in to vacuum of a pixelated utopian world. ~ Kelley Nguyen // Earmilk
Gadget Collection 1
Spring 2020
A short collection of sequenced music written and produced exclusively with KORG Gadget for the Nintendo Switch between 2018 and 2020
Selected Singles ✨
Under The Leaf
Summer 2023
Slow-building, steady, and emotional track featuring a mix of different timbres and dynamic visuals.
Nen Beast
Spring 2023
Experimental glitch track released as a part of Monastery Records’s VARI-TECH VOL. 02: SECOND COMING compilation
Maxo & Ehiorobo - Bedside
Fall 2017
Dense and soulful collaboration with Ehiorobo
Artwork by mushbuh
The electronic elements throughout the track twist and flip in a playful manner and showcase cute sound bites of ice clinking in a glass or a cell phone ringtone. Ehiorobo's flawlessly belts out the track's lyrics with smooth and soulful vocals, which are expertly layered on top of its production. ~ Rachel Steer // Earmilk
