Xeno & Oaklander: Via Negativa (In The Doorway Light) (ruby red) LP

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", Recorded in the fall of 2023 at their modernist Connecticut home fashioned into a two-story synthesizer laboratory and mixing studio, "Via Negativa (in the doorway light)" 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.