Rei Brown On His Latest Album 'Xeno'

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'.

- Bryan Goh

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.

e 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 Limp Bizkit did the soundtrack for a season of the X-Files.