The alienation, angst, and awkwardness of simply being different in a mainstream context make for some cathartic listening as condensed by Asian American artist Rei Brown’s with his latest album ‘Xeno’.
Hello Rei, how’s it going?
Hi! I’m doing okay. I’m about to be on tour for a month and a half while rolling out my album. It’s kind of a lot all at once and a little terrifying but I’m really excited to be sharing my new album with the world.
In a 2020 interview, you mentioned that you drew inspiration from architecture but ‘Xeno’ is now about your experiences. Would you say collectively, that everything you’ve released is an anthology of sorts?
I’ve always been evolving and exploring different things with art. With a lot of my past works, it was coming from the perspective of this macro lens. I was really obsessed with viscerality and trying to capture the essence of these very intense and raw feelings like taking something like a lover’s hand brushing against your skin and trying to see how deep I could explore that sensation.
With ‘Xeno’, I’ve put the wide lens on and shifted to tell bigger and more intricate stories.
From ‘Raybaboon’ to ‘Xeno’, everything sounds very atmospheric but somewhat nostalgic and wistful. Would you agree?
Absolutely. I’ve always been a very nostalgic and sentimental person. Maybe that somehow ties into some deeper sense of longing or maybe I’m just really aesthetically drawn to things from the past.
Recently I’ve been describing ‘Xeno’ as if the Backstreet Boys and Limpbizkit did the soundtrack for a season of the X-Files.
Interestingly, every track and particularly — When I Fall Asleep and Ez — sounds very cathartic, like a breath of fresh air after swimming underwater. Do you think it’s perhaps, an album that has “set you free”?
It’s funny you say that because the secret backstory in my mind for ‘When I Fall Asleep’ is exactly that. I wrote about a kid that’s feeling disconnected from the world and the conclusion is that they realise they’re an alien. The whole last section where I’m singing “I come unwound, feet off the ground, we’re solar bound and we’re going all the way,” is them pulling their human skin off, being picked up by the mother ship, and being taken back home.
It’s sad because a lot of the characters in these songs are being “set free” or being liberated from oppression, but that’s not the case for a lot of people in the real world. We’re stuck here and we have to figure out how to make the world a better place. But I think that the beauty of sci-fi is that you can challenge our realities and paint new and better ones.
Everything from your Instagram visuals to your music videos looks very analog so would you say it’s your aesthetic as an artist or just the way you live?
I think film photography is as analog as I get. Even then, I equally love iPhone photography because of how clinical it can feel. I grew up with mp3s and the internet so I’m a very digital person. I don’t have a big vinyl collection and I don’t have a lot of physical books.
I’m always ripping audio from random Soundcloud mixes or screenshotting movies to moodboards.
The title track of ‘Xeno’ is particularly powerful. “What am I made of / that you’re afraid of”: what motivated you to write this song?
I don’t want to go too deep into this because I feel like it might limit how people relate to the song, but it’s based on very real and intense moments in my life. Xeno, the song and album, is about identity, alienation, and otherness.
For me, I experienced those things via xenophobia and homophobia but it might be something else for others.
‘Dosey Doe’ ends the album and it feels like a nice way to wrap it up, sort of sweet and hopeful but still somewhat wistful. Why did you decide to end ‘Xeno’ with it?
I went through a few versions of the tracklisting when I was finishing the album, but having Dosey Doe as the final song always felt like the most natural conclusion to Xeno. The song, both lyrically and sonically, captures this whirlwind relationship where you’re being spun around and eventually both launched into separate directions.
I feel like listening to the album feels a little bit like that too.
People like to ask musicians if they continue seeing themselves producing the same “sound” in the future but what I’d like to ask is, do you think you’ll ever get tired of it?
I don’t think I’ve ever been producing the same thing. I’ve almost struggled with the opposite where I have a bunch of songs and they’re so vastly different that I’m not sure they’ll even make sense on the same project. But to answer your question, I always get tired of the same sound. I will never make the same sound or music if I can help it. I do this thing where I try to never even use the same kick or snare sound.
I’ve told producers that before and they look at me like I’m crazy [laughs]. But I think you’re in trouble the second you can boil your process down to some sort of equation or recipe.
What’s next for you then? What are you most excited about?
I’m excited for the world to hear ‘Xeno’ and to start working on my next project.
Photo credits, @bbyclaude. Once you’re done with this story about ‘Xeno’ by Rei Brown, click here to catch up with our June/July 2022 issue!
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