Meet Matthew from Secret Shame, the bass-thumping, synth-slinging maestro who moonlights as XOR (pronounced “ex-or”). Before XOR became his latest gig, Matthew was the musical equivalent of a secret agent, slipping in and out of aliases like a pro. Then, in a twist that could only come from the mind of someone who’s spent too much time toggling between bass lines and binary, he names his new venture after a logic gate. Inspired by his sudden dive into the world of code, XOR symbolizes not just Matthew’s geeky side but also the delightful contradictions of his life. Here’s a guy who tried to ditch the digital for a decade, dreaming of a cabin in the woods, only to swing back, write some slick software, and plug right back into the electronic beat.

In his latest single Waiting, a poignant ballad about the agony of long-distance love, the artist delves into the profound longing for a cherished one’s company, laying bare the challenges and heartache that come with separation. The lyrics, steeped in a sea of mementos, capture the overwhelming desire to reconnect, to bask in the sound of their voice, and to bridge the gap that keeps them apart, underscoring the emotional weight carried by distance. For those who have been there, it brings a tear to the eye. This wistful, sentimental track resonates with echoes of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Soft Cell, Aztec Camera, and the Thompson Twins.

“I wrote this song for my partner,” he says. “We’d gone from being around each other non-stop during lockdown to me being away on tour a large part of the year. It’s hard to navigate being on the road so much and having a life at home. No matter how often we call or text, it just isn’t the same as being around someone and sharing a life with them.”

Listen to “Waiting” below:

“I usually write the music for a song before the lyrics, which might be why a lot of what I write ends up being instrumental,” he continues. “I had this song like 80% musically done when Secret Shame went on tour last spring and was listening to it on repeat wearing headphones in the van thinking of what to write about.”

XOR spent the last few years self-releasing several EPs spanning from house to ambient, darkwave to chillwave. He has also released a handful of official and unofficial remixes for many artists, including Secret Shame, Cold Choir, and Shadow Age; and produced beats for hip-hop artists.  In recent years, Matthew began exploring the world of modular synthesizers, reshaping mundane days of remote work into impromptu compositions he would later live-stream against sunsets or amidst the flowers in his garden.

In 2023, XOR also released the EP beyond the tall trees somewhere. Branching out from his previously more straightforward darkwave, the five tracks explore the complexities of human existence, the nebulous boundaries between natural and artificial, and the discomfort of existing in a dying world.

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The post “Weeks apart, and time feels like an Ocean” — Listen to the Poignant Synthpop of XOR’s “Waiting” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

The fear of the mine was long gone

It’d given reason for some hope

Picture this: Matthew, also known by his moniker XOR, creating sonic masterpieces in his basement, as if time was standing still. Armed with a vintage Roland JX-3P synthesizer, he pours his soul into every note, determined to leave his mark on the musical landscape. Taking inspiration from the digital logic gate of the same name, XOR, pronounced “ex-or,” recently unveiled a new single titled “Penokees.”

Matthew spent his formative years growing up in the heart of the Moral Majority. However, seeking solace in the arms of green anarchist subcultures, he spent a number of years attempting to live a self-sustaining lifestyle. Matthew hopped freight trains to get around and at times found himself living outdoors, exploring the art of foraging. During one particular summer, he joined an Ojibwe harvest camp where members were defending their land against the construction of a mine on their traditional tribal grounds. “Penokees” is about one of his friends who went to prison over this conflict.

XOR’s music has a way of capturing the intangible essence of the human experience, painting sonic landscapes that resonate with the deepest recesses of the soul. The lyrics are nostalgic for a simpler time enjoying the landscape and its people with abandon – a private Eden, corrupted by industry and greed.

“Ironically, the song is coming out during another large scale resistance to environmental degradation as Altanta pushes forward to develop the massively unpopular Cop City in the Weelaunee forest,” Matthew says. “Penokees” exudes a sense of bittersweet melancholy, illuminated by Matthew’s enchanting vocals and taut, pulsating rhythms.

Matthew, a musical polymath, found himself in a precarious position. His roots in punk and hardcore subcultures had a firm grip on his being, yet his personal musical proclivities leaned towards the glitzy allure of electronic and synth-pop. As the bassist for Secret Shame, a guitar-driven band with drums, Matthew yearned to expand his musical horizons and explore something more dancey and pop, while still retaining the darker elements that spoke to his soul.

It is this desire that led him to his self-titled debut and beyond. Matthew hunkered down in his home studio, tinkering away at his Roland JX-3P vintage synthesizer, crafting sonic landscapes that reflected his deepest desires. But this time, he had a partner in crime – producer and engineer Adam McDaniel (Avery Tare, Indigo DeSouza, Angel Olsen) lent his expertise to the mixing and mastering of XOR’s latest EP, “beyond the tall trees somewhere.”

Set to be released on April 27th, this new EP promises to be a musical journey like no other. Matthew’s musical dexterity, coupled with McDaniel’s technical finesse, has resulted in an enticing project that exudes an irresistible allure, with its shimmering melodies and hypnotic beats. “beyond the tall trees somewhere” is a testament to Matthew’s creative vision and his unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of his craft.

beyond the tall trees somewhere is out on April 28th, 2023.

Order Here

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The post Synth Pop Project XOR Debuts Shimmering and Bittersweet New Single “Penokees” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

When Armageddon arrives and the Four Horsemen eradicate us into oblivion, it will all go down the hatch of a vacuous black hole with a beautiful synth line—leaving nothing but an ember of hope into the vast darkness. This is a song for those who dare to dream even as every star flickers sombrely out of existence.

Matthew, a.k.a. the mastermind behind XOR, imagines himself in his basement, fiddling with a Roland JX-3P vintage synthesizer as we shuffle off this mortal coil. Borrowing the name from a type of digital logic gate, XOR (pronounced ex-or) has a new single, entitled And On. The track is swaddled in a warm melancholy glow, brightened by Matthew’s melodic vocals and taut, pulsing tempos. As with the other songs on the album, this track is animated by psychic dread, the thought of departed souls ripped away by the time-space continuum.

After growing up in the epicenter of the Moral Majority and then taking refuge in green anarchist subcultures, Matthew spent several years trying to live off the grid, hopping freight trains to get around—sometimes living outside, getting into foraging. He spent one summer at an Ojibwe harvest camp, where members were doing land defense against a mine being built on traditional tribal land. For years, Matthew has felt caught in limbo: entrenched in punk and hardcore subcultures, but personally more into electronic music and synth-pop. Indeed, Matthew has spent the past five years as bassist for Secret Shame. “Secret Shame’s a guitar-driven band with drums, and I wanted to do something that’s more dancey, more pop, but still had the darker elements,” he explains.

This solo album provides an outlet for the influences and sounds long-simmering inside, drawing upon influences as wide-ranging as The Cure, Björk, Aphex Twin, and Clams Casino, topped off with an insistent drum-machine pulse and glistening synth lines worthy of a John Hughes montage. He began writing songs near the start of lockdown, initially planning a single and then realizing he’d have enough for a full album. At the heart of the record is an unresolved tension between the artist’s unease with technology and his heavy reliance on it, both for music and for work as a software developer and creator of open-source, in-browser synthesizers.

Listen to “And on” below:

Or your preferred streaming service here.

The XOR album is available for pre-order (self-release, out July 30th). Order here.

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XOR tackles the Saturn Return and that specific concept of revisiting points on the karmic wheel with the lush single Saturn Returns, a fierce but tender electronic track with speedy beats, highlighted by Matthew’s contemplative voice. In and of itself, the process of creation and his own personal experience at that cosmic precipice.

The name XOR (pronounced “ex-or”) comes from the logic gate; it also represents a recognition of the contradictions necessary to thrive in the modern world: mastermind behind the electronic project, Matthew (Secret Shame), spent much of the past decade making steps towards living off the grid before learning to write software and returning to electronic music. For years, Matthew has felt caught in an in-between space: entrenched in punk and hardcore subcultures, but personally more into electronic music and synth-pop. This solo album unleashes nocturnal slow-burners drawn upon influences as wide-ranging as The Cure, Björk, Aphex Twin, and Clams Casino, topped off with an insistent drum-machine pulse and glistening synth lines worthy of a John Hughes montage.

“I actually previously recorded a version of this song when I was between music projects, but never did anything with it,” says Matthew. “I was nearing 30, wondering what I was doing with my life, and didn’t really have goals. The past decade had been pretty scattered–I had tried various ways of existing in the world but wasn’t really satisfied. I’d also grown pretty accustomed to spending a lot of time in my head, imagining different pasts or futures or presents without ever doing much to change my current situation. In hindsight, that habit kept me from actually doing anything–it was much easier and more satisfying to imagine how things could be different than to actually try something.”

You can listen to Saturn Returns and preorder the album here:

Cover Photo: Mica Rage

The post Xor Orbits the Solar System with the Dark Synth-Pop Melodies of “Saturn Returns” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

When the end of the world comes, Matthew, a.k.a. XOR, predicts he will already be hunkered down in his basement studio, fiddling with a Roland JX-3P vintage synthesizer and writing songs for End Times.

XOR’s self-titled debut album, due out this summer, is a brooding, hypnotic set of darkwave gems equally at home in a goth club or a future dystopia with subjects like mental health, the loss of loved ones, and the general ennui and anxiety of living in a collapsing empire. “I wasn’t like, I’m gonna write a dark album,” Matthew says. “That’s just what came out…I wanted to start singing again.”

The songs on XOR are bathed in a warm melancholy glow, but brightened by Matthew’s melodic vocals and taut, pulsing tempos. Often, he’ll start humming a melody while walking his dog around the forest, then return to the studio to build a song around it. The natural environment around his home influences his melodies and synth patches.

Much of XOR is animated by psychic dread. The downcast Yesterday examines pandemic isolation and the weight of a year’s worth of abandoned plans. The deceptively buoyant Cheer Up takes comfort in the thought that someday we’ll all be dead and the universe will reach a cold stasis. The hooky gloom of Saturn Returns thoughtfully addresses the ambivalence of getting older in an uncertain world. With its gurgling synths and new wave flourishes, Tooth Worms reckons with historical ignorance (the title alludes to the once-common belief that tooth aches were caused by worms) and addresses the grim reality of living in a collapsing empire. But there is still a glimmer of hope.

Matthew has spent the past five years as bassist for Secret Shame. “Secret Shame’s a guitar-driven band with drums, and I wanted to do something that’s more dancey, more pop, but still had the darker elements.”

This solo album—his first after self-releasing several EPs—provides an outlet for the influences and sounds long simmering inside. These 10 nocturnal slow-burners draw on influences as wide-ranging as The Cure, Björk, Aphex Twin, and Clams Casino, topped off with an insistent drum-machine pulse and glistening synth lines worthy of a John Hughes montage. After previously releasing music under the name Fuck Jamz—“which was not easy to put on flyers,” Matthew laughs—he rechristened the project XOR (pronounced “ex or”), borrowing the name from a type of digital logic gate. He began writing songs near the start of lockdown, initially planning a single and then realizing he’d have enough for a full album. At the heart of the record is an unresolved tension between the artist’s unease with technology and his heavy reliance on it, both for music and for work as a software developer and creator of open-source, in-browser synthesizers.

After growing up in the epicenter of the Moral Majority and then taking refuge in green anarchist subcultures, Matthew spent several years trying to live off the grid, hopping freight trains to get around—sometimes living outside, getting into foraging. He spent one summer at an Ojibwe harvest camp, where members were doing land defense against a mine being built on traditional tribal land. For years, Matthew has felt caught in limbo: entrenched in punk and hardcore subcultures, but personally more into electronic music and synth-pop.

“For a while, I was just like, ‘The world is collapsing around me! I’m going to prepare for it and go off the grid,’” Matthew recalls. “And then it wasn’t? I was like, ‘Alright, time to get that 9-to-5 job, get that mortgage, get my shit together.’ And as I’m doing that, it feels like the world is actually collapsing around me.”

“I think it’s common enough in punk or anarchist subcultures for people to bounce from city to city, so you don’t often think much of it when someone has a spotty history or long list of places behind them. Sometimes, though, it allows people to burn bridges, leave town, and start over somewhere new, instead of building meaningful relationships or working through the ways they’ve harmed people. This song is about the uncomfortable intersection between accountability and abuse, trauma and mental health. I spent a couple years trying to help a friend learn to treat people well, but in the end I had to cut them off.”

The intriguing self-directed black and white video for the song “Path” depicts Matthew performing, interspersed with scenes of him cutting his own hair (in a bathroom eerily reminiscent of Dale Cooper’s hotel room at the Great Northern in Twin Peaks) and grinding a mysterious substance in a mortar and pestle to mix with wine. It is disturbing in the mundane; ominous in the absurd, a snapshot of the eternal forever of quarantine life.

The song itself is sonically reminiscent of minimal synth variation on Violator and Playing the Angel era Depeche Mode, tinged with melancholia specifically tied to isolation; its churns with quiet introspection and woodland settings of the video and press photos brings to mind the simplicity of Thoreau’s Walden, and the diverging roads of Robert Frost.

Watch Path below:

Matthew plans to perform his XOR material live later this year, or whenever live music safely returns. In the meantime, he’s set a goal to record and release one cover song each month: In January, he put out a darkwave rendition of AFI’s God Called in Sick Today, and in February, he covered New Order’s Temptation.

Stream Path on the XOR Bandcamp below:

The XOR album is available for pre-order (self-release, out July 30th). Order here.

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The post Roads Diverge in Introspective Isolation with Dark Synth Project XOR’s Video for “Path” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

XOR spent the last few years self-releasing several EPs spanning from house to ambient, darkwave to chillwave. He has also released a handful of official and unofficial remixes and produced beats for hip-hop artists. XOR has a side gig creating open-source, in-browser synthesizers.

“I made a goal to record a cover a month for 2021,” he says. “It seemed like a good outlet to channel my creative energy while I shop around for a label to release the album I wrote and recorded in 2020. One a month is a steep goal, but I have the tendency to sit on tracks forever, tweaking and reworking them until I’m sick of it. Limiting myself to a month won’t let me do that.”

The latest offering from XOR, a cover of AFI’s God Called In Sick Today, is an unexpectedly nostalgia-tinged electronic delight. XOR strips the harsh, raw vocals performed in the original and erases the aggressively scratchy metal guitars – he replaces them with a gentler synth and wistful vocal, sounding more like a forgotten track by OMD, New Order, or Tears For Fears. It’s a bold move with a lovely sonic payoff that spans genres effortlessly. It’s interesting to hear a new wave-styled version of an edgier emo track.

“Aside from The Cure, AFI was the band that got me into dark music growing up. I know they’re not traditionally considered goth because they pulled heavily from hardcore, punk, and what got mislabeled as emo, but the influence is definitely there. I wanted to start the series with something unexpected, and I liked the challenge of taking something not electronic and turning it into something new.”

XOR is currently finishing his first full-length album, which explores such topics as mental health, the loss of loved ones, and the general ennui of living in a collapsing empire.

Listen to God Called In Sick here:

Pboto credit Kikimora Desgins

The post XOR Covers AFI’s “God Called In Sick Today” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.