Yes Axo is much more low level than G2. In G2 you can only work with the objects that are there and that is it. But we can build our own objects Axo. Very nice, but also more complicated.
Technobear, if you didnt se the video Sputnki posted with clips of Alchemy you should watch it. It basicly has got all the paramters that would be great to implement in the sample manipulator.
Maybe you get some ideas on how to implement samples and modulations from that video.