Xeno & Oaklander – Blue Flower (Live at Wierd)

Minimal wave, or minimal synth music has been around since the late 70s and early 80s, but until finding a revival over the last few years was a very obscure and underground genre. While there were some LP releases at the time, it was more common for minimal wave artists to go the punk/DIY ethic – self-pressed and distributed 7″s and especially releases on cassette tape, meaning that as you can imagine digging up these old treasures can be next to impossible now over 30 years later, and it’s safe to say that there is probably a whole wealth of music out there that might never see the light of day again.

Thanks to labels like New York based Minimal Wave, run by Veronica Vasicka who is dedicated to digging up these old treasures and remastering and re-releasing them on vinyl and as digital downloads (with artists permission of course) the minimal sound has been really making waves — pun possibly intended — in the underground electronic scene and it’s not hard to see why. With it’s punk ethic, lo-fi drummachine rhythms, romantic analogue synthesizer melodies – often played as live instruments instead of being sequenced (midi is a rarity, and even shunned by many as being too rigid), deep lyrics and passionate but often cold and distant vocals, it makes for beautiful listening though being in Sydney I don’t have the pleasure to see this stuff being played live or played at clubs.

The minimal wave sound has also had a huge influence on the electro scene over the past few years, you only need to listen to songs like Novamen – Lies, or check out record labels like Le Syndicat Electronique’s new label Musamore, or German Das Drehmoment.

My own introduction to minimal synth was through French electro label Invasion Planéte. The Invasion Planéte sound was very electro for the first few releases but quickly started becoming more and more sparse and minimal. I’ve always been a huge fan of Beta Evers, who’s sound is heavily inspired by vintage German New Wave and EBM, as well as old 80s industrial like early Ministry and listening to Front 242, Nitzer Ebb etc so I guess I had already been warmed up to the sound, but by about halfway through it’s lifetime, Invasion Planéte was concentrating almost exclusively on minimal wave music, and as i’d been following closely the Invasion Planéte releases it first really caught my attention, hearing artists like Silent Signals (aka Echo West) and Bakterielle Infektion from Germany, and of course Le Syndicat Electronique’s own music along with fellow label mate Porn.Darsteller.
It was electro, but not like i’d ever heard it before…apart from the prominence of vocals, something about it was raw and different, and I had to hear more. Before long, I found labels like Enfant Terrible from Holland and Wierd from New York and from there things spiralled out as I discovered there was a whole scene to this minimal wave music, with artists both now and ranging back right to the 1970s.

Xeno & Oaklander are from Brooklyn, and just released their masterpiece first full length album Sentinelle on Wierd Records. Members Sean McBride; well known for his solo project Martial Canterel and visual artist/filmmaker/fashion photographer Liz Wendelbo, who has also collaborated with Miami based Staccato Du Mal and New York trio Three To Forgotten (Xeno & Oaklander with Epee Du Bois) have a strict set of rules for their music — exclusively analogue synthesizers (no soft-synths, no midi and no digital, a bold move in this day and age of click and drag producers and DJs that have never touched a turntable in their lives), and one take recordings played as live as possible.

Sentinelle is a deep and richly layered album, with lyrics from both Liz and Sean, paranoia and disaffection, tales of underwater cities, the industrial revolution and a world of shadow combined and seamlessly changing from English to French, sometimes in the same song. The music itself ranges from slow synth pop style tracks to tense high-BPM synth-punk and from deep and romantic to at times aggressive.

This song, Blue Flower is from Xeno & Oaklander’s first EP Vigils — a self released CDr on Martial Canterel’s label Xanten, and also appeared on the second Wierd Compilation from Wierd Records, though both versions are different from each other, and different again to this version, which was played and recorded live at a Wierd party in New York in 2008.

I really love the original version from Vigils and for me it’s hard to beat. Tender synth melodies and haunting vocals from Liz Wendelbo, from the first time I heard it I found it amazing. But this live version is beautiful. The long and atmospheric intro and added depth of Martial Canterel’s vocals add a whole new layer of tension which I find just incredible.

Xeno & Oaklander – Blue Flower (Live at Wierd)