Skyriser
by Maxo
Fall 2017, TREKKIE TRAX // MX-066
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_
- Plushlined
- Dependent
- Tears In The Wind
- Grow Wings
- Kite
- Tears In The Wind (TORIENA Remix)
- Grow Wings (Tomggg Remix)
- Grow Wings (Carpainter Happy Hardcore Remix)
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
