Olga Maximova (also known as OMMA), a Russian artist, music producer and inventor based in France is here to change the game of our knowledge in music creation. She has a strong career built having released an album “Teplo”, participating in the Onebeat project with +25 musicians form 17 countries to recompose the soundtrack of “Koyaanisqatsi” to play in different cities, and working on her experimental project Playtronica recording sounds for different installations such as the prestigious museum Pompidou in France.
1. Your work moves between Nantes and Paris. How do these different environments shape the emotional tone and sonic textures in your productions?
I’ve been living in Nantes for five years, and indeed it shapes my sound more than Paris: bicycles, rivers, boats, parks, trams, skate parks, forests, and a great mix of architecture from Le Corbusier to ornate cathedrals. And my favourite is the huge mechanical elephant: it’s like Nantes’s own Eiffel Tower.
It’s a bike-friendly, very human-scale city, surrounded by rivers, forests, farms, fishing villages, and the ocean is just an hour away. That closeness to nature brings softness and space into my creations, more organic textures and a certain calmness, let’s say.
At the same time, Nantes has a strong cultural energy: museums, galleries, and cosy cafés along the riverside. I stopped DJing and going out at night, so I don’t really know that side of Nantes anymore. My favourite places are more about food and nature, hehe La Maison Arlot Cheng, Station Nuage, Madeleine Café, and Le Lieu Unique, a cultural space that hosts interesting concerts and organizes a very unique musical festival “Variations” every April. I really recommend it.
Paris, on the other hand, is more about projects and work. It has a different intensity, more focused, more demanding for me.
2. Does it become quite a challenge to imply your emotions through different languages?
It can be both pleasurable and challenging. I feel that when you learn or sing in new languages, you partly drift away from your native tongue. Not speaking your own language for long periods can confuse the brain and make it harder to fully grasp what you’re feeling, at least that’s how it works for me.
3. Your project Playtronica transforms everyday objects into instruments. How was this project born?
Playtronica was born from curiosity and play: experimenting with how sound can emerge from unexpected materials. Over time, it evolved into a shop selling musical devices, and later transformed into Can Touch This Studio, focusing more on sensorial experience (performances, installations, interactive activations)
4. What unusual objects have you played ? and which would you like to explore?
Once, I played on the largest pineapples in Hawaii for a Hermès boutique opening — I had never seen pineapples that huge!
I still haven’t tried working with a large natural surface like a lake. One of my dreams is to literally play music on water.
5. What has Playtronica taught you about sound, intuition, and how people interact with music?
It taught me that everything starts with experimentation. For example, I once had an idea to connect water with paper marbling because my friend, French-Japanese artist Emilie Hirayama, works with the Japanese suminagashi technique. We created a video where water controlled sound and patterns. It went viral, millions of views, shares, and features in major magazines and channels.After that, galleries invited us to perform live, and we recently created a performance together as Liquid Form Sound Lab. It’s fascinating how a small intuitive idea can grow into something completely new. I had never seen a band playing on water while sound was visually marbled on paper in real time.
6. You’re a multi-instrumentalist known for “unearthly” textures. When you begin a new piece, what pulls you first: rhythm, melody, or experimentation with technology?
Melody always pulls me in first. Sometimes a track starts with me playing different synths in my home studio. From there, rhythm and technology help me stretch the idea, break it apart, or place it in space.
7. France’s electronic scene is often described as less experimental than Russia or the UK. How has that contrast pushed you creatively since moving to Nantes?
When I moved to France in 2017 after being immersed in Moscow’s experimental festivals, bands, and events, it was difficult to find that same level of experimentation here. But over the years, the scene has evolved, and I’ve also learned how to build my own context: creating projects, collaborations, and platforms rather than waiting for them to exist.
8. Dance was your gateway into music. Do you still feel movement in your body when you compose, and does choreography guide your production decisions?
How do you know? I studied ballet, classical dance, and a bit of contemporary backdays in Moscow. Today my practice has shifted more toward qigong and yoga, but movement is still very present in my life and compositions.
I’m especially drawn to unpredictable rhythms — when your body expects a beat that never comes or polyrhythms confuse the sense of balance. I love when the body doesn’t quite know how to move.
9. Your childhood appears in your visuals, especially the VHS moments. What part of that younger Olga do you still carry into your adult artistic life?
My childhood was one of the happiest periods of my life, even though the 1990s in Russia were very difficult — food shortages, post-perestroika instability, political changes, strikes.
Creating the “Sol Pleureur” clip was a joy because it allowed me to revisit that time and bring my childhood memories to life. I spent hours going through old VHS tapes, seeing how happy I was. Remember some friends thought it was too personal to share home videos, but for me, it was important to show a different perspective of Russia in the 90s — a mix of nostalgia, personal joy, and the broader struggles of the post-USSR period, the state of communism, and the general climate at the time.
10. What does your future hold in terms of new projects or events? What would your dream project be?
My dream project is an interactive castle — a fully immersive musical dinner experience combining sound, performance, concerts, technology, and storytelling, where the audience becomes part of the artwork.
