{"product_id":"via-negativa-in-the-doorway-light","title":"Via Negativa (In the Doorway Light)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe eighth and latest slate of refined retro-futuristic synth-pop by Liz\n Wendelbo and Sean McBride aka Xeno and Oaklander is named after and \ninspired by \"the study of what not to do, a negative image of a \npositive, the other side, the other:\" \u003ci\u003eVia Negativa (in the doorway \nlight)\u003c\/i\u003e. Recorded in the fall of 2023 at their modernist Connecticut \nhome fashioned into a two-story synthesizer laboratory and mixing \nstudio, the album is uniquely visionary in spirit yet precision in \nexecution, a contrast central to the duo’s enduring chemistry. Embryonic\n piano sketches were translated to nuanced modular systems, which \nMcBride weighted with \"harmonic padding,\" tuned percussion, and a \nspectral transfer device capable of \"rendering spasms of rhythmic \novertonal filigree.\" Despite the technological complexity of their \ncraft, emotively the songs require no deciphering – these are \ntechnicolor widescreen anthems of the cybernetic age.\n\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe eponymous opening track sets the pace, soaring sleekly over \nglittering synths and call-and-response vocals about arias, shattered \nlight, and faces in stereo. From there the record expands and contracts,\n cycling through a gallery of moods and masks, animated by the band’s \nfascination with drama, \"the idea of personae,\" and theatrical \ncharacters. Track by track, a murky, tragic backstory\n reveals itself: forlorn figures navigating a treacherous mercury mine, \nalternately poisoned by fumes or buried in collapsing caverns. The \ntension between Teutonic, utopian synthetic pop and lyrical narratives \nof ghosts in silos, ruined mills, and the traumas of mineral excavation \ncreates a compelling friction, alternately futurist and obsolete, \nelevated and subterranean. Wendelbo describes the music’s polarities \nperfectly: \"The heavy machinic din of extraction in contrast with the \nenchantment of the mined precious gems and metals.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom bilingual odes to bloodstones (\"O Vermillion\") to cosmic chrome \ndance floor classics (\"Lost and There\" \"The present tense can never \nfeel real \/ So many pasts conspire in the burning sun\") to strutting EBM\n sensualities (\"Actor's Foil\"), Xeno and Oaklander re-prove themselves\n masters of the axis of technology and poetry, snaking cables and \nsynesthesia, mining melodies and myths across 15 years of focused \nartistry. Theirs is a muse still gilded and gleaming, burnished red and \nsilver, attuned to \"the unobservable, the unfamiliar, that which you \ndon’t see directly.\"  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dais","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50531313221963,"sku":"2220272","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Red LP","offer_id":50531313451339,"sku":"2220274","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50531312992587,"sku":"2220271","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Via_Negativa_in_the_doorway_light_8d5bac07_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728103678","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/products\/via-negativa-in-the-doorway-light","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}