aaamusic | On 22, Jun 2011

XENO & OAKLANDER

‘The Staircase’ single released 24th June

European live dates announced – London headline show on 6th July

‘The Staircase’ Xeno & Oaklander from WIERD Records on Vimeo.

Wierd Records is proud to present the new two track digital single by Xeno & Oaklander ‘The Staircase’ b/w ‘Not Afraid’ on 24th June. This will be the first single from Xeno & Oaklander’s forthcoming album on Wierd entitled Sets and Lights due out on October 11th. Also ready for release is a video for ‘The Staircase’ directed by Taryn Waldman.

Baroque electronic arpeggios and fast celebratory beats drive the surrealist scenario of ‘The Staircase’ in which a staircase continually leads to dead ends. The delicate ghostly female vocals mirror this eternal motion forwards and backwards and up and down. This dark tale takes flight into warm noise ornaments and glistening synth flourishes and comes right back to its core: minimal electronics.

‘The Staircase’ video is set in a claustrophobic 19th century Brooklyn tenement building, and follows the ethereal Xeno as she walks up and down a never-ending staircase. We see her peeking through keyholes at mysterious Oaklander, and looking behind locked doors. The degraded and grainy black and white analogue video look is echoed by the building’s gradual collapse. Produced by post-production house Boxmotion (with Gus Van Sant’s latest movie on its roster), the video feels like a Xerox, copied over and over, blown out and dark. As Xeno descends down the stairs and touches the banisters and walls with her hand, cracks start to form and spread like a spider’s web to the whole staircase. The menacing cracks frantically end at the starting point of the video: the voyeuristic keyhole. The video was directed by Taryn Waldman, and the director of photography was Patrick Stroub.

The B-side track for the digital single ‘Not Afraid’ is a haunted and dark waltz which takes you to a private enchanted universe of silk, flowers, leather and lace, sheltered away from turbulence and doom. For fans of French coldwave Trisomie 21’s ‘La Fete Triste’ and neo-folk Death in June’s ‘To Drown a Rose’.

Sean McBride of Xeno & Oaklander released a new album You Today by his solo project Martial Canterel in February on Wierd Records.

Xeno & Oaklander will play a serie of UK/EU dates in support of ‘The Staircase’:

JULY //
6 // LONDON, The Lexington
7 // BRIGHTON, venue tbc
8 // AMSTERDAM, Nieuwe Anita w/Future Islands
10 // MILAN, Q21
11 // BASEL, New Jersey
12 // VIENNA, Fluc
13 // STUTTGART, Komma
14 // BERLIN, King Kong Club
16 // BUDAPEST, Kuss Mich/Roham

www.wierdrecords.com