Xeno & Oaklander - Vi/deo - Blue Color Vinyl Record

Xeno & Oaklander have been refining minimal wave since 2004, and Vi/deo, their seventh full-length album, is the duo at their most fluid. Released by Dais Records in October 2021, it finds Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride turning their noir synth pop into eight gleaming songs of retrofuturist romance.

The album took shape at their Connecticut home studio during the pandemic, and that isolation runs through it: screens standing in for stages, distance passing for intimacy, and a fascination with synesthesia, scent and obsolete technology. Opener “Infinite Sadness” sets the tone with precise, melancholy analog electronics, while Wendelbo’s clear, choirboy-styled vocals glide over McBride’s layered, polished synthesizers. Fans of cold wave, darkwave and classic 80s synth pop will hear the lineage, but the sound is entirely their own.

This is the blue vinyl edition, limited to 600 copies, a fitting colour for a record built on the idea of sound as colour. As one lyric puts it, “blue is fast and red is slow.”

A beautiful pressing for minimal synth collectors and a natural addition next to Hypnos or Par Avion.

Side A
1. Infinite Sadness
2. Poison
3. Afar
4. Technicolor

Side B
1. Television
2. Gain
3. Movie Star
4. Rain Garden