Wierd Records is proud to announce the release of a vinyl edition of Xeno & Oaklander's Vigils EP, originally self-released by the band as a limited edition CDR in 2006, here remastered with a previously unavailable bonus track. Merging the cold, cinematic aesthetics of artist Liz Wendelbo with the architectural exactitude of Sean McBride (a.k.a. Martial Canterel), Xeno & Oaklander have been the sharpest spearheads of twenty-first-century minimal synth since their formation in 2004. Using analogue synthesizers and instruments exclusively, the duo record all of their songs live in the studio, a challenge to the common practice of cut and paste recording where immediacy is often sacrificed in favor of a far-removed drag and drop electronic pop.
Recorded in one continuous take on October 1st, 2006, and played to loving death by all of the DJs at the weekly Wierd party for the past four years, Vigils has long been a cornerstone and inspiration to a new young generation of electronic bands in the Brooklyn synth scene and beyond. Uptempo, echo-laden synthesizers and drum machines provide a spacious backdrop for Miss Liz's ephemeral vocal presence. Their melodic, mournful oeuvre is an invocation of a lost future that was abandoned years ago in favor of something less human. These 8 tracks are both fragile and psychedelic, suggesting an electronic equivalent of the British shoegaze bands while maintaining the wildly aggressive stripped-down, raw and unmediated spirit of punk and the seminal industrial noise groups that informed the ideals of the original wave of European minimal electronic bands.