Listening to Oxiroma unfold “Hug & Hold the Ocean (Cosmo Symphonic Version)” feels less like pressing play on a digital file and more like opening a window in a submarine that somehow navigates the Milky Way. Roman, the creative force behind the moniker, brings a peculiar discipline to this composition perhaps it’s the Kriya Yoga, or maybe the ghost of his big band trumpet training teaching him exactly when to let a phrase breathe, even when the instrument is electronic.
The track is an intricate tapestry of Symphonic Synthwave and Chillwave, but those labels feel a bit too stiff for something this fluid. The primary melody cascades in bright, rippling cycles, evoking the sensation of skipping stones across a lake made entirely of neon light. It reminds me, strangely, of the specific visual distortion you see when looking at a swimming pool through polarized sunglasses sharp, glittering, yet soft around the edges.
There is a steady, pulsing rhythm here, but it doesn’t demand you march to it. Instead, it acts as a heartbeat for the track’s warm, sustained harmonic background. While the concept aims to capture the grandeur of space travel and the anticipation of first contact, the result avoids the bombastic clichés of sci-fi scores. It is space travel for introverts. It captures the silence between the stars rather than the roar of the rockets.
I found myself thinking about the smell of ozone right after a thunderstorm breaks that sudden clarity and shift in pressure. This music occupies that same sensory space. It is cinematic, yes, but for a movie that plays exclusively on the back of your eyelids.
If the cosmos is a mystery waiting to be solved, Oxiroma suggests we don’t need to shout into the void to understand it. We just need to float. Does the universe hum back if you listen quietly enough?
