Xeno & Oaklander - Via Negativa (in the doorway light) [LP]

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: DAIS235LP
Barcode: 0683950558007
Release Date: 15 Nov 2024
Genre: Electronic

The eighth and latest slate of refined retro-futuristic synth-pop by LizWendelbo and Sean McBride akaXeno & Oaklanderis named afterand inspired by"the study of what not to do, a negative image of apositive, the other side, the other:"Via Negativa (in the doorway light).Recorded in the fall of 2023 at their modernist Connecticut homefashioned into a two-story synthesizer laboratory and mixing studio,the album is uniquely visionary in spirit yet precision in execution, acontrast central to the duo’s enduring chemistry. Embryonic pianosketches were translated to nuanced modular systems, whichMcBride weighted with"harmonic padding,"tuned percussion, and aspectral transfer device capable of"rendering spasms of rhythmicovertonal filigree."Despite the technological complexity of their craft,emotively the songs require no deciphering–these are technicolorwidescreen anthems of the cybernetic age.

The eponymous opening track sets the pace, soaring sleekly overglittering synths and call-and-response vocals about arias, shatteredlight, and faces in stereo. From there the record expands andcontracts, cycling through a gallery of moods and masks, animated bythe band’s fascination with drama,"the idea of personae,"andtheatrical characters. Track by track, a murky, tragic backstoryreveals itself: forlorn figures navigating a treacherous mercury mine,alternately poisoned by fumes or buried in collapsing caverns. Thetension between Teutonic, utopian synthetic pop and lyrical narrativesof ghosts in silos, ruined mills, and the traumas of mineral excavationcreates a compelling friction, alternately futurist and obsolete,elevated and subterranean. Wendelbo describes the music’s polaritiesperfectly:"The heavy machinic din ofextraction in contrast with theenchantment of the mined precious gems and metals."

From bilingual odes to bloodstones ("O Vermillion") to cosmic chromedance floor classics ("Lost&There""The present tense can never feelreal / So many pasts conspire in the burning sun")to strutting EBMsensualities ("Actor's Foil"), Xeno & Oaklander re-prove themselvesmasters of the axis of technology and poetry, snaking cables andsynesthesia, mining melodies and myths across 15 years of focusedartistry. Theirs isa muse still gilded and gleaming, burnished red andsilver, attuned to"the unobservable, the unfamiliar, that which youdon’t see directly."

TRACKLIST:
SIDE A:
1. Via Negativa (in the doorway light)
2. Mercury Mind
3. The Unknown Side
4. Lost & There

SIDE B:
1. Actor's Foil
2. Magic of the Manifold
3. O Vermillion
4. Strange Fellows