For 20 years, Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride have explored the vast expanses of aural art through dimensional synthetic technology and synthwave performance aesthetics that breathe perfection. Each album in the Xeno & Oaklander discography is an intentional visionary journey; a universe crafted from compositions that evoke the senses through a synthesis of imagination and intoxicating poetic storytelling.
It’s been a few years since we dove into the experience of the Vi/Deo release and now Wendelbo and McBride have devoted their new album to the art of “unlearning” with Via Negativa (in the doorway light). It’s gloriously drenched in hypnotic beats that feel deliciously accessible while artfully adventurous. The music transforms us into a world that explores the study of what not to do and how to challenge conventional learning through a culture that pulsates through humanity’s veins.
“I always thought it was very important to learn new things and maybe unlearn some of the things you’ve been initially taught in order to push boundaries,” says Wendelbo.
This comes from being inspired by the founder of experimental theater, innovative Polish theater director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski.
“Grotowski would have these workshops for actors to try and undo some of the education that they had and preconceived ideas and habits. And I think this is a way of thinking that’s always been interesting to me. And specifically for this album, this theme runs through the songs with a sort of Grotowski way of thinking. It seeps into the lyrics and, in some ways, into the arrangement of the songs—how the different parts come together and how the sounds become dissonant and then come back into harmony.”
It comes from Wendelbo’s desire to break the rules and nurture the rebellious aspects of structure as McBride builds a new form of thought through the language of music.
“I’ll sit at the piano and then find some unusual chord progressions that move me. And then I’ll look for the most distant or really unusual or maybe even awkward key change,” adds McBride. “I then try to figure out a way to, kind of, environmentalize those things so that they function as a unity.”
These elements of intrinsic processes help build the story that links all of the songs in Via Negativa (in the doorway light) together. The album transforms us to a village that revolves around a mercury mine. Wendelbo dissects the backstory of the album, its culture, and the external forces of nature that wrap around this labor camp around the mines.
“In this environment I look at its inhabitants, its workers, the activities they do every day, the dreams that they have and the dangers. . . the dangers that they encounter in the mine. It’s dark. There’s mercury all around glowing with a red and silver toxicity. There is a whole atmosphere to this place.”
Elements from this world exist in songs like “O Vermillion,” where red pigment is symbolic to the intoxication and seduction that fuels life and death while it bleeds over into the cinnabar of their fashion as the two symbolically pose in their element.
Songs like this also showcase more of the equality in vocal duties between Wendelbo and McBride and a rejuvenated duality. It all comes into play with the band’s infrastructure.
“We do as much as we can ourselves,” said Wendelbo. “We take our own photos. We may make our own video content for the live shows. We mix ourselves with American artist Egan Frantz who’s part of the family here.”
As forward-thinking as Xeno & Oaklander is and how they celebrate the power of the modular synthesizer, there is a mysticism to classical routes that drives the essence of style.
“I’ve been working with this stuff for so long that these instruments are almost more conventional,” said McBride. “They’re almost more like multi-variant. I will do nuanced instances where I do something outside of my realm, and I will surprise myself.”
“What is influential to me are composers like Ravel or made-for-TV British dramas from the mid-’80s. They always had these soundtracks that were atonal or very high European modernist Avant Garde—like 1920s or 1930s clarinet, flute, things like that. And then there is this kind of weakness in those harmonies that I love. It’s something that’s always in my mind, like those kinds of dissonances that are controlled. It’s very gothic, and it’s very dark. It’s not a kind of pastiche of the gothic. Like, just two minor chords or something. It had real intrigue and kind of a possible hopelessness.”
Despite these negations, there is an intoxicating demeanor to the danceable elements of this work and a sensuality to songs like “Actor’s Foil” or “Magic of the Manifold.” The listener can easily become captivated by its concurrence.
“We’ve had 20 years to explore more complexity as a sense of purpose,” said Wendelbo.
“We continue to constantly learn,” added McBride, “and listen to new things while considering new kinds of forms like opera, baroque music, early music, renaissance music. I listen to various cadences and how that translates into a sound that’s heavily wave folded. If something feels hackneyed or kind of trope, I have to undermine it. I have to underline it. So, you can never settle. I’ve just stuck with these kind of instruments for more than 20 years, so I’ve built up a musical vocabulary. There’s this weird interchange between music writing, music learning, rehearsal, all within the synthesizer. It’s an infinite universe.”
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