If you opened a can of tuna and it started humming in Vocoder harmonies, you’d get something close to Oxis. A former pop vocalist turned lo-fi architect, she’s tearing up the rulebook and rewriting her sound live on Oxis 7, a raw plunge into mood swings and melodic debris, crafted with a laptop and an undercurrent of oceanic inspiration (each track title has its own aquatic name). Sam Gellaitry, her longtime friend and fellow sonic tinkerer, knows what it means to swim against the current in the DIY music world. Together, they dive into aquatic alter egos, viral flukes, and the strange, slow drowning that is finishing a track.—OLAMIDE OYENUSI
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SAM GELLAITRY: Hello, Tuna. How’s it going?
OXIS: Pretty good. Where are you?
GELLAITRY: I’m at the house.
OXIS: Same, Koreatown.
GELLAITRY: I’m planning to move soon to La La Land.
OXIS: No way. Let me come to London first.
GELLAITRY: Yes, please. I love the album.
OXIS: Thank you.
GELLAITRY: It sounds very soundtrack to me.
OXIS: I suppose I’m very dramatic. It’s the melodrama coming out.
GELLAITRY: I feel like it would fit perfectly in an indie film from the late 2000s.
OXIS: Oh, yeah.
GELLAITRY: And obviously the names of each track are related to underwater things. I loved “Goldfish.” How long did it take to make it?
OXIS: A couple months. I’m just a very impatient person.
GELLAITRY: I feel like my projects take me 20 years.
OXIS: Well, I always wish that I had the patience to be hyper-meticulous. Maybe that comes out in the choppiness. It’s all very jagged and nothing’s too perfect. But I just have to get it out or I would feel absolutely insane.
GELLAITRY: I have mountains of stuff, but I’ll never put it out.
OXIS: How do you sleep at night?
GELLAITRY: It’s the belief that the right ones are coming.
OXIS: Things have been going a bit mad for you.
GELLAITRY: It’s wild because it’s been kind of bubbling for a while.
OXIS: Can you do the TikTok dance?
GELLAITRY: No, I cannot.
OXIS: I think you’re lying.
GELLAITRY: I’ve not fully tried it. I have to. Next interview, I’ll have it. What’s the relation to the sea stuff?
OXIS: I was called Tuna most of my life.
GELLAITRY: Why?
OXIS: I had a teacher in third grade who’s from Rhode Island and he had this very strong accent. And the way that he pronounced my name, Valentina, was “Valentuna.”
GELLAITRY: Oh my gosh.
OXIS: We snipped off that first part and it was on my report card. It was my entire identity.
GELLAITRY: That’s crazy. I told you when we first met that my best friend’s cousin’s nickname was Tuna, so I know two.
OXIS: Ha, two tunas!
GELLAITRY: I’ve got two tunas in my life.
OXIS: There’s also Big Tuna from The Office. But after I graduated high school, I wasn’t Tuna anymore.
GELLAITRY: Were you always on board with it?
OXIS: Tuna? Yeah. I also eat tinned fish three or four times a week.
GELLAITRY: Do you have a favorite track on the album and is that your favorite fish, potentially?
OXIS: Good question. I would say my favorite track on the album is “Pike,” but I’ve never had pike. I don’t know if it’s something I can order off a menu. I think if you’re going out to fish, they’re the ones that you would post on your Instagram.
GELLAITRY: It’s huge. I just googled it. “Known for its white flaky meat and mild, slightly sweet flavor.”
OXIS: That does sound good.
GELLAITRY: Have you always been making music?
OXIS: I’ve been singing since I could talk. It’s funny, for most of my life I was singing very loud, in a very pop sort of way. And then when I started Oxis, I kind of went internal. I wanted to make music that felt like the antithesis of everything that I’d ever been. But then it ended up being the most vulnerable thing I’d ever made. I’m finding my voice again through that, even with the way that I mix my vocals in Oxis 7.
GELLAITRY: Do you mix all your stuff?
OXIS: Yeah.
GELLAITRY: Wow. You can’t replicate that. Are you a control freak?
OXIS: Yes.
GELLAITRY: Me too.
OXIS: What music have you been ingesting lately?
GELLAITRY: I actually have this weird thing where I don’t listen to too much music because I try to starve myself of the thing I love the most. I can create exactly what I’m missing out on.
OXIS: I should say, I was dancing to your album in the kitchen this morning.
GELLAITRY: Oh, perfect.
OXIS: The last track is my favorite. It’s just incredibly euphoric and I can’t wait to ride bikes to it during summer.
GELLAITRY: I was literally working on that before you called because there was a verse I didn’t finish. I wanted to have a theme to the album but still a mixed bag of emotional output.
OXIS: I think you did that perfectly.
GELLAITRY: Thank you so much. I’m glad you like the last one, too. I wrote the melody on the Vocoder there.
OXIS: Is there one plug-in that’s been the driving force?
GELLAITRY: There’s a plug-in I use called Falcon which is really good. It’s kind of house.
OXIS: Are you gonna play live a ton?
GELLAITRY: Yeah, hopefully. Do you like performing live?
OXIS: Yeah, I performed about four times. The first one was for about a thousand people opening for Julian Casablancas, with the looper.
GELLAITRY: Oh, crazy.
OXIS: It was terrifying.
GELLAITRY: In the deep end.
OXIS: Indeed. But it’s also incredibly fun and I felt like a little lab scientist because I performed with guitar and vocals for so long. Being able to hit bleeps and loops on stage is really fun.
GELLAITRY: Does it ever go wrong?
OXIS: Absolutely. There are certain backing tracks that are locked in, but for the guitar, the tempo is just based on how good I can play it and how much I practice. It’s quite panic-inducing at times.
GELLAITRY: I admire you for that, that’s very brave.
OXIS: Thank you. I’m figuring out how I can get live fish in the shows.
GELLAITRY: An aquarium life set.
OXIS: Yeah. When you listen back to your music, do you like it?
GELLAITRY: I wouldn’t say I cringe, but the main thing I can hear is how hyperactive I was back then. It sounds like a young person made this stuff, just bombarding the sounds. But now it sounds like the inversion of that. Finding the main element and making that the centerpiece. I remember doing sessions like 10 years ago and the stuff I would play for the artist would have zero space for vocals whatsoever.
OXIS: It’s a good thing to evolve. Do you go clubbing?
GELLAITRY: Not too much. Do you go out?
OXIS: No, mainly because I have to perfect my loops so much. And I enjoy it. I mean, I’ve only performed four times and with the structure of each song, there are a million different ways that it could go. I could spend days just figuring out the ins and outs of one song.
GELLAITRY: That’s good. I get cabin fever. I’m quite a social creature. I need to leave the house at a certain point.
OXIS: Well, this summer we’ll make music and ride Citi Bikes.
GELLAITRY: I can’t wait.
OXIS: And eat meat. Yay.
GELLAITRY: Sardines for us.
OXIS: Yes, I’ll bring you a ton of sardines.
GELLAITRY: I’m scared. I’ll try anything once, I guess.
OXIS: What’s the best advice you’ve heard to pass on to a young musician?
GELLAITRY: Try your best to do as much of it on your own accord. That’s how you unlock your signature. It might be the longer way to do it but it sticks forever. And don’t learn too much theory. It can be a hindrance because you’re not relying on complete emotion. You kind of rely on what your brain is telling you to do.
OXIS: It just takes the life out of it.
GELLAITRY: There’s something about when someone starts making music for the first time and they’re really focused on it feeling good rather than figuring out why it feels good.
OXIS: It’s more intuitive.
GELLAITRY: Do you know music theory?
OXIS: I did at one point. I went to band camp for piano and vocals and I had to learn all that, but I completely agree with you. I feel like if I have just my laptop on my living room floor, if I have as little as possible, it makes me more creative.
GELLAITRY: You came to our session with no interface. Just a laptop and some headphones. I loved it.
OXIS: I didn’t know people bring interfaces.
GELLAITRY: It’s just a clunky thing.
OXIS: I tell myself I have to reach certain checkpoints in production in order to get a Moog or something.
GELLAITRY: Oh, really? Which ones would you like?
OXIS: I just want to go to Circuit City, this massive modular synthesizer place in L.A., and get a little something cute.
GELLAITRY: This one is semi-modular. This might be fun for you. It’s called the Labyrinth. It’s basically a sequencer but there’s no keys, so you corrupt each thing, and then that changes notes. You don’t control the notes that are playing, but you can put them in a scale. You have to tame it. It’s got a brain of its own.
OXIS: That’s fun.
GELLAITRY: You can have a shot when you come over.
OXIS: It’s cool to struggle with it. I’m trying to incorporate my Teenage Engineering beat machine now.
GELLAITRY: Yeah, I have mine on the ground. I have a banger on that one. I need to get back.
OXIS: You should. They’re so cute looking and easy to play with.
GELLAITRY: Anything else you wanted to talk about?
OXIS: I don’t think so.
GELLAITRY: I’m excited to make tunes with you though. I loved our first session.
OXIS: Me too.
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