Xeno & Oaklander- Via Negative (In The Doorway Light)

Label: Dais

Released 11/15/2024

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:

1. Via Negativa (in the doorway light)
2. Mercury Mind
3. The Unknown Side
4. Lost and There
5. Actor's Foil
6. Magic of the Manifold
7. O Vermillion
8. Strange Fellows