Xeno & Oaklander - Analog elegance

Sean: It was at one of Scot's parties, I used to go there often and you were with Gill.

Liz: Ah, yes, that's right. Scot is a Swedish musician.

Sean: An artist.

Liz: Yes, a performer artist who lives in an abandoned building, an old noodle factory I think, or something like that.

Sean: Yeah, it was a noodle factory.

Liz: A really deserted, isolated place, where other artists live too. So Scot organized a party one day and Sean came down from his recording studio upstairs, while I was downstairs playing some minimal-electro records, since I was the DJ that night, and that's how we met for the first time, it was in 2003, October 2003.

Sean: Nah, I don't think so. Most goth music is fairly guitar-driven, like death-rock. Martial industrial is more post-'90s, and then minimal wave isn't really a genre as such.

Liz: Oh yes, it is, and originally it was called "minimal electronic".

Sean: No, originally there wasn't really any term to describe it at all.

Liz: Yes, there was a term and it was "minimal electronic", but somehow or other we believe that what we do operates on a level beyond that. Because "minimal electronic" also dates back to the '70s, and what we play today is more than anything an extension of it.

Sean: At the start we were interested in that kind of band, because they had a minimal infrastructure, both in terms of production and in terms of graphics, visuals, but above all for the instruments they used, which were simple, direct. Those were the days of homemade music, when synthesizers started becoming commercially available. It was the first time electronic music could be produced in a garage, then starting from the mid-'80s, with the arrival of digital technology, this analog sound, this kind of purity of sound, was forgotten. I mean, people normally prefer new things, but the way I see it, from 1978 to 1984 there was a real golden age of musical instrumentation, and that's what we try to reproduce; then it's simply by chance that we have similarities with that kind of music, because, as Liz said before, we're actually trying to be an extension of all that.

Sean: I speak a bit of French, a bit of Hungarian, Russian, but I think culture and identity are something pure, something that goes beyond language.

Sean: We met during one of our shows, or rather he came to one of our concerts in London and really loved what we were doing onstage. So afterwards we started talking and he wanted us to remix one of his songs. A few days later he sent us a file with the track, and we did the remix in our home studio.

Liz: Yes, he was genuinely interested in our music. The first thing he said to me when we met was, "Oh Liz, what I find really fascinating about your music is that you simply strip away everything that isn't necessary."

Liz: It's a French term. It's used for sending postcards, the English equivalent of "air mail" (they laugh).

Liz: There's a kind of brightness that contrasts with the cold precision and the use of synthesizers. It's as if there's something warmer, a light, embedded within our usual cold sound. Ultimately, we could say it's a more baroque work, yes, it's an album with a distinctly baroque feel.

Sean: It depends. It's always different.

Liz: It's lovely to write songs while travelling. That's basically what I do: I write songs while travelling, and then when I get back to the studio I try to rearrange them, trying to bridge the gap between studio practice and the spontaneous inspiration I had when I wrote them. Travelling is very important, and songs are like letters you send into the future, or like postcards arriving from the past.

Liz: Also on the mood of the moment, so every show is inevitably different from another, and all the songs and our interpretations really depend on the state of mind we find ourselves in.

Sean: We want to have fun and take on new challenges every time. We're not interested in playing the same way a thousand times over.

Liz: Also because it's all analogue and live, so when you're onstage you can play for as long as you like, you just let the drum machine go and improvise a bit more, letting yourself be guided purely by your intuition.

And is it easy to coordinate with each other?

Liz: Yes, because, as I mentioned before, we've been playing together for more than ten years, so we know each other very well and we know our "performance style", so if Sean feels like improvising an extended ending to a song, I follow him and simply extend it too.

Liz: Because deep down that's where it comes from, "minimal electronic" comes from Europe.

Sean: Yes, and then it spread all over the world between 1975 and 1984, but the identity, the style, the image are unmistakably European. They differ from one another mainly in the use of the voice...

Liz: And also already in the sound. I don't know, but there's something more DIY about the American sound, maybe less polished, I don't know, I'm not sure, but that's my impression.

Liz: (laughs)

Sean: Well, this is a tough question. I love Europe, but I could never be European.

Liz: But I am!

Sean: She is… so I'm an outsider both in America and here! (laughs)

Liz: Well, from our latest album it's without a doubt “Par Avion”, the song.

Sean: Yes, I totally agree (laughs).

And among the past ones?

Liz: And among the past ones, I think “Sentinelle”.

Sean: Mmm for me… uh… “Zuruck”, which was the first song we made together, and there's actually no recording of it, but it was without a doubt one of our best performances, so yes, “Zuruck” is definitely one of my favorite songs from the past.