Name: Aditya Ashok aka OX7GEN
Occupation: Producer, DJ
Nationality: Indian
Current release: OX7GEN's Evenire EP is out via HE.SHE.THEY.
Recommendations: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is the ultimate book for every creative. Dive by Tycho is a sonic masterpiece that everyone should have the good fortune of experiencing.

If you enjoyed this OX7GEN interview and would like to keep up to date with his  music, visit him on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Music has the ability to instantly change the internal narrative that one is having, so it’s much more of a mind thing than a body thing for me.

Music is always playing in the house so I’d have to say I listen to it mostly with my eyes open. But when I’m on a plane or just before I sleep, I get to listen to music with my eyes closed and it instantly feels like adding another subtle dimension to the listening experience.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

What fascinates me most about listening to music is its radio-frequency-like quality. The ability to tune into a certain time and space with a particular song, because of a moment in the past where there was an overlap between the sound waves travelling through the air as it hit your ear drums and what you were experiencing at the time.

It has a time machine like quality, instantly allowing you to travel back momentarily.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

One of my first few encounters with musical instruments involved trying to figure out how to play the vocal melodies of a bunch of popular Hindi songs that my parents used to listen to. I was trying this on guitar and a tiny Casio keyboard we had at home.

I don’t think it did much for me theoretically but it helped me develop a strong relationship with my ear. This has helped me tremendously in the production world when working with melodic instruments & MIDI, as I don’t have any formal music theory knowledge.
 
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

When I was that age, music allowed me to become larger than life, or at least larger than the scrawny 13 year old that I was. It was the moment I transitioned from radio pop and boy bands straight to Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and the whole nu-metal revolution. The rebel in me was slowly awakening and the power I felt from rock & metal was immense.

Honestly, I feel like not much has changed. I now also have the ability to appreciate other delicate styles of music that I might have found boring at that age. But the emotional impact that music has on me is luckily still the same.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

More than the equipment, I would say there’s a pretty strong connection I have with my studio space.

It’s been very carefully thought out and constructed. I spent a year and a half meticulously planning out the tiniest of details. When I step into the space, there’s a feeling of serendipity. It feels like I was always meant to eventually find myself here.

There’s a sense of immense gratitude and I’m inspired to sit down and get to work.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Over the years I’ve changed my process from waiting for inspiration to strike, to showing up everyday and just jumping in.

Ideation for me usually starts with a jam on my laptop with whatever synth, plugin or effect rack is exciting me the most at the time. There’s a moment of magic when the experimentation suddenly transforms into something deeper. In an instant, there’s a feeling and a glimpse into something bigger. Then it’s a race to put the idea down on the DAW as soon as possible.

In my current phase I’m mostly expanding on my catalogue of strictly dance floor material. I’m drawing a lot from my hazy memories as a young Mumbai raver in the early years of the 2010s.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

My daily life over the last few years has seen me purposefully slow down. The pandemic allowed me to shift my base to Goa and still be able to do what I do without subscribing to the maddening pace of a city like Bombay. So in a lot of ways, the high energy moments I get to experience as a producer/DJ in the studio or out in a club, is a perfect balance to my otherwise mellow days in Goa.

When I’m writing or searching for new music, I’m trying to find something that first and foremost is groovy. It’s gotta make my head move the first time I hear it. If it’s got a sense of depth and nostalgia, it’s an instant pick for me.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

Since everyone has their own relationship with different musical styles, it might be a difficult language to communicate feelings with. But what it definitely communicates is a person’s cultural leanings and lifestyle. It’s like a beacon that calls out to others that might resonate with the energy and emotion of a piece of music.

In this case, a misunderstanding would be lack of context for someone who doesn’t resonate with that particular style of music. I would just avoid the situation in the first place by playing what is appropriate for the “conversation”. Which in a lot of ways is what DJs essentially do.

Hope I haven’t misunderstood that question :)

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

Luckily for us producers, there’s fun new toys being developed every day so it’s easy to stay inspired.

I also find myself being pulled away from this joyful spark when I start to think too much about the final song and what box it could fall into. Mindfully detaching from that vision helps me stay tuned to the source, at least in the initial stages of the writing process.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

One of my favourite sounds is that of a large ride cymbal being perfectly scrapped by the slightly grimy tip of a drumstick. It’s a very distinct and sonically rich sound, quite tricky to produce, and it’s quite non musical in a traditional sense, but extremely satisfying.

I think it’s quite fun to “find the music” in the sounds around us. One of my first releases had a recorded sample of waves that I was using as white noise sweeps across the song.

And almost anything repeated cleverly is an easy way to extract musicality out of the mundane.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

The forms of most songs are quite easily captured by the number 2, which is in essence a single repetition. And every repetition there on are multiples pop 2, representing the numbers associated with the structure of 90% of songs. 4 bar phrases, 8 bar transitions, 16th notes drum fills, etc.

Intervals between musical notes is another beautiful representation of the relationship between music and numbers.

But while numbers can capture things like play count and chart positions, there’s no way to ever quantify the impact music has on people.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

When I’m writing, I usually have a fixed routine of my work hours and days, but I might throw in the odd night shift every now and then.

The project is usually well organised and coded. But within the sessions itself, there’s quite a bit of freedom to follow ideas where they may go and discover something new and exciting.  

This balance between some amount of discipline and some amount of freedom is how I try to approach a lot of things in life as well.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Music for me is such an easy way to change how you’re feeling, that it feels unreasonable not to constantly be using it for that purpose.

And although 90% of my time goes in listening to music either actively or passively, I have been deliberately taking time off from it for some time everyday, specially in the mornings. Since it’s almost always on, the time when it isn’t, has a meditative quality to it.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Yes I think creating music is very similar to cooking. There’s ideas, ingredients, treatment of ingredients, how they combine and react with each other, fine tuning, and finally dressing it up. You can do it with love or you can do it because you have to, and in both cases the audience will be able to tell.

Performing/creating music allows you to connect with something outside of yourself and feel much bigger. Not in an egoistic sense, but there’s a feeling of depth to your existence when you’re connected to that source.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

At this point, I just hope future generations will still see the value in music that has humans involved in it being made.