This is a preorder. Albums can be picked up or will be mailed out upon street date. Order by 11/1/24 to get by 11/15/24.
Label: Dais
The eighth and latest slate of refined retro-futuristic synth-pop by Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride aka Xeno & Oaklander is named after and inspired by "the study of what not to do, a negative image of a positive, the other side, the other:" 'Via Negativa (in the doorway light)'. Recorded in the fall of 2023 at their modernist Connecticut home fashioned into a two-story synthesizer laboratory and mixing studio, the album is uniquely visionary in spirit yet precision in execution, a contrast central to the duo’s enduring chemistry. Embryonic piano sketches were translated to nuanced modular systems, which McBride weighted with "harmonic padding," tuned percussion, and a spectral transfer device capable of "rendering spasms of rhythmic overtonal filigree." Despite the technological complexity of their craft, emotively the songs require no deciphering – these are technicolor widescreen anthems of the cybernetic age.
Track listing:
- Via Negativa (in the doorway light)
- Mercury Mind
- The Unknown Side
- Lost and There
- Actor's Foil
- Magic of the Manifold
- O Vermillion
- Strange Fellows