Photo: Liz Wendelbo
New York’s avant-garde synth-pop sages Xeno & Oaklander—Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride—announce the release of their latest album . The album’s concept, drawn from the philosophy of negation—“the study of what not to do”—suggests that absence reveals essence. It’s a subtle dance between form and emptiness, between sound and silence, where each note balances upon the edge of nothingness.
Crafted in the pair’s shadowy studio sanctum, these compositions started as embryonic piano lines and grew into elaborate, interconnected modular synth systems. McBride, ever the architect, adds what he calls “harmonic padding,” weaving together tuned percussion and a “spectral transfer device” to shape the album’s rhythmic architecture. The outcome is a deeply textured masterpiece that captures Xeno & Oaklander’s fascination with the tension between raw spontaneity and measured exactitude.
From the first note, the album breathes, pulses, and shifts, a carousel of moods and masks, driven by the band’s obsession with drama, the dance of personae, and the theatrics of human experience. Each track unfurls like a murky tale, a tragic procession of souls lost in a treacherous mercury mine, either gasping from poisonous fumes or swallowed whole by collapsing caverns. A seesaw tension emerges, teetering between utopian, Teutonic synthetic pop and lyrics dripping with tales of spectral silos, shattered mills, and the traumas buried in mineral excavation. Wendelbo captures it best: “The heavy machinic din of extraction in contrast with the enchantment of the mined precious gems and metals.”
The production feels deliberate, intricate, yet the emotional pulse stays sharp and striking. Via Negativa (in the doorway light) thrums with electric life, darting between frantic choruses that conjure images of shattered mirrors, fractured beams, and specters trapped in static air. These are no hollow gestures; they sing for a new cybernetic dawn, echoing with purpose.
From bilingual ballads to bloodstones (O Vermillion) to cosmic chrome dance hits (Lost & There) and EBM indulgences, Xeno & Oaklander reaffirm their mastery over the dance between technology and poetry. Snaking through cables and conjuring synesthesia, they mine melodies and myths, their muse still gilded in red and silver, tuned to the strange and unseen, thriving where logic falters.
One strutting EBM standout, Actor’s Foil, explores themes of tension and composure, layering a sense of unease over precise, controlled movements. It’s an anthem of being watched, of striving to stay steady under the weight of perception. Lyrics echo the pressure of presence, a world where intention twists with performance, where every emotion belongs to an inescapable system, rigid and theatrical.
Listen below:
See Xeno & Oaklander on the road in North America this November and December. In February, the band will also be making an appearance at this year’s Grauzone Festival in The Netherlands.
Listen to Via Negativa (in the doorway light) at the link below, and order the album at the links here.
Tour Dates (includes newly added dates)
Follow Xeno & Oaklander:
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