8×8 Photo credit: Daria Odaynik and Leslie Rosh
The trans-Black Sea duo 8×8 possess an intuitive musical lexicon conversant in all things groovy. Yet neither member speaks the other’s native language—and they’ve never spoken or met in person. Singer-songwriter Lane Steinberg lives in New York City, while multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Alex Khodchenko resides in Kyiv, Ukraine. Over the past 16 years, the pair have maintained a remarkably prolific partnership, releasing six albums. Their latest, Immaculate Constellation, is the first installment of a planned double album.
“We’re unburdened by the things of terrestrial relationships. It feels like we’re just floating in the cosmos, and the Immaculate Constellation is our work environment,” Steinberg says with a laugh. “I just made that up! It’s almost a running joke that we don’t really know anything about each other, but we don’t want to break the spell.”
The two have discussed the Russo-Ukrainian War, and its shadow has inevitably seeped into 8×8’s music (their previous album was titled Life During Wartime). Immaculate Constellation, named after a rumored UFO program, explores fatalism and deeper psychological terrain while retaining the band’s world-weary playfulness. The 14-song collection is starker and less ornate than its predecessors, balancing hard-edged, Nuggets styled rockers with bittersweet atmospheric ballads and whimsical psychedelia. Steinberg promises the second volume will be stranger and more experimental.
8×8’s songs are built from sound as much as songwriting. Their music resembles impressionistic painting more than traditional pop composition, drawing inspiration from 1960s obscurities like the British psychedelic-pop band Nirvana, a host of Dutch psych groups, Brian Wilson’s ornate musicality, The Beatles, The Zombies, Procol Harum, and classical music. Yet 8×8 never feels retro or like a nostalgia act. Their songs sound vibrant and contemporary, recalling the mind-melting work of Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips, and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
Steinberg is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and longtime fixture of New York City’s rock scene, having performed with the Beatle-pop band The Wind as well as on solo projects and collaborations with R. Stevie Moore. His contributions to 8×8 are reactive, providing lyrics, vocal melodies, and lead guitar to Khodchenko’s pop psychedelic soundscapes. Khodchenko is a visual artist and mad scientist multi-instrumentalist (piano, bass, drums, and some guitars) and songwriter/composer. “He has a unique authenticity,” says Steinberg, “Like he was frozen in 1967, and defrosted in the present day.”
The pair met via Myspace back in 2010 when Khodchenko proposed collaborating with Steinberg. Their partnership was a success right out of the gate with their first song,
Song “Snowflake InThe Rain,” garnering accolades and attention. The two quickly developed a workflow with the help of Google Translate and the internet. Steinberg honed in on an automatic writing style where he would download Khodchenko’s email with the attached song, put it in Pro Tools, get the levels right, and set up his microphone and just start singing. The guys decided to call themselves 8×8 as the visual graphic looks like two identical beings on either side of the X.
For years, their relationship remained almost entirely musical and artistic, but the war cast a dark cloud over the partnership. Steinberg encouraged Khodchenko to treat their music as a refuge from daily life, and together they worked more intensely than ever, writing enough material for two albums. Originally conceived as a single double album, Immaculate Constellation ultimately became two separate releases.
Steinberg wrote the lyrics for Immaculate Constellation in what he describes as an almost unconscious state, yet his concern for his bandmate seems to have surfaced throughout the record. Songs steeped in post-apocalyptic imagery are balanced by hopeful spirituality, quirky musicality, and sharp wit. Compared to the lush productions that have defined much of 8×8’s catalog, these arrangements are leaner, often built around acoustic guitar.
The album opens with “Angry Little Waterfall,” which oozes Nuggets-era menace through its garage-rock swagger and Vox Continental organ. Its abstract lyrics channel social unease. Steinberg sings:
“Angry little waterfall
Your torrents have fractured our peace
The chicken lady dangles from a branch high in the tree
The jungle’s dark sun can’t penetrate the canopy
She lives a life of solitude she’s happier this way
Her legend leaves the curious queuing up each day.”
“I was feeling like there were waves of hatred and anger mindlessly sweeping over people, and there was no way to stop it,” Steinberg says. “We just had to endure it.”
The juxtaposition of modern technology and vintage musical language is a signature thread in Steinberg’s writing. “Are You Gaslighting Me Alexa?” explores that tension while venturing into textures rarely heard in 8×8’s catalog, drawing on the glistening textures of 1980s new romanticism à la The Human League and Simple Minds. The song’s outro is sublimely symphonic retro power-pop with a 1990s flair, recalling Jellyfish.
“Peggy Jones” is an unabashed Northern Soul love song propelled by an infectious Motown groove and a soaring chorus whose sustained vocal melody seems to suspend time. The bittersweet ballad, “Last Night Somewhere,” carries an ominous emotional weight that inevitably evokes the war. “The doom of Kyiv was definitely a subtext in there,” Steinberg admits. Immaculate Constellation closes with “Destination Wedding,” a trippy blues-rocker filled with enigmatic backing vocals, strange atmospherics, Steely Dan-esque wit, and tasty guitar interplay, as Steinberg’s stinging lead lines weave around Khodchenko’s graceful filigree.
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