Oxia Details

Olivier Raymond, born in 1971 in Grenoble (France), got into“black music” (disco & funk) already in his early teens. During collegeyears, Olivier’s friendship with Stéphane Deschezeaux, kick started a musicaljourney, with a debut on a local radio station broadcasting a show dedicated toFunk … hence, only being 15 years of age, Olivier had started mixing. Olivier’s mixes were influenced by alarge spectrum of music styles: electro-funk (Afrika Bambaata…), italo-disco,new-wave (Depeche Mode, New Order… ) and the early Chicago and New-York housescene.

By 1991, Stephane and Olivier bought their first bits of equipment andstarted to compose music. Not too long after that, Olivier became a resident djat a club in Grenoble, jump starting a career in electronic music!

It was by 1994, that the experiments of Stephane and Olivier became official.Their live act ‘Oxia’ was born.

In 1995, Olivier and Stéphane met Michel Amato (The Hacker), Alex Reynaud andKiko in Grenoble, the electronic-tuned city of France. That same year Olivier created Ozone recordstogether with Kiko, where Oxia released the first EP (influenced by theAmerican techno sound à la Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and Damon Wild). On thatsame stamp, Olivier also co-produced the first releases of Jack de Marseille.

Olivier never rested and went on to create a new label with Michel Amato akaThe Hacker and Alexandre Reynaud in 1998. They baptized it ‘Goodlife’ in homageto the mythical Inner City track.

Olivier and Stéphane still produced several EP’s together and by the end of thecentury they decided to part paths (as good friends) and Olivier continued withOxia as solo DJ act.

Oxia’s continued sound evolution gave birth to a series of EP’s & remixeson Goodlife but also on labels such as Intec, Terminal M, … leading to aworldwide dj diary. The excelling dj qualities were captured in several mixcds, and that’s not all. A page still unfolding, Oxia released his debut soloalbum ‘24 HEURES’ on Goodlife in 2004 that floats between groovy melodic technoand a deeper electro touch. Besides the major international press attention,’24 Heures’ reached he n°5 in the category ‘best album’ by the readers of Traxmagazine.

After an extended period of touring, Oxia returned with some A class releases& remixes in 2006. ‘Domino’, on the German Kompakt stamp, became aworldwide hit played by every DJ you can think of. More Oxia releases for theEnglish Tsuba stamp (collaboration with Eric Borgo), Confused (collaborationwith Gino’s) and another banger on Kompakt (‘Not Sure’). The new release on hisGoodlife stamp (‘Lost Memory’) finally came in December 2007. The icing on thecake came in 2008 when Oxia got voted in second & third spot in theBeatport Music Awards ‘Best Remix’ (Oxia remix for Butch ‘On the line’) andBest Techno Artist.

The list of remix requests got longer and longer. As you can imagine, thiscontributed to a busy dj schedule which even got more intense by the vibrant djbattle done with his good friend Agoria.

In 2009 Oxia did not shy from releasing some more fine material. In October the‘Sun Step’ EP was released on 8Bit record reaching immediately top rates in chartslike Beatport, Resident Advisor, etc. He mixed the fifth anniversarycompilation of Systematic (a selection of tracks exclusive to the Systematiccompilation), including a previously unreleased track (‘Trying Out’) producedwith his friend Nicolas Masseyeff.

2010: With Nicolas Masseyeff, a new release on Tsuba, ‘Keep the drums’, gotreleased. Furthermore Oxia also remixed one of Nicolas’ tracks. For hislong-time friend Agoria, Oxia delivered ‘Less time’ (Infiné Music) and withEric Borgo he did another ep for 8Bit (‘Plastic Bed’).

2011 saw Oxia mixing another b-day compilation. This time he made a selectionfrom the 8Bit cataloque for their 5th anniversary. On this mix you can alsofind a previous unreleased track of Oxia (‘Meaningful’). Soma wanted to haveOxia on the bill for their 20th anniversary so he contributed hisinterpretation of the ‘Human’ track by Slam.

But most importantly Oxia has finished his forthcoming 2nd solo album,

it will release on InFiné Music in May 2012.

After so many years in the game, Oxia is still at the forefront of theinternational electronic scene, never losing sight of all influences he hadalong the way and keeping one strong element in his music, and that is groove!