There’s a restless, glitching anxiety running through Mono Modern, the latest album from South Carolina experimental artist Xeno Ray JNB. Drawing inspiration from the technological dread of OK Computer while filtering it through the overstimulated chaos of the mid-2020s, the project comes off as a corrupted transmission from someone watching creativity slowly dissolve inside algorithms, artificial intelligence, and cultural erasure.
Xeno Ray JNB handles nearly everything himself here: writing, recording, production, mixing, mastering. That DIY spirit bleeds into the album’s raw texture. He leans into the imperfections as he builds eerie soundscapes from ambient drones, industrial distortion, stuttering glitches, and ghostly synth haze. The whole thing feels haunted by modernity.
The opener, “Mono’s Mona,” immediately sets the emotional tone. Over a slow, mournful atmosphere, Xeno sings in a defeated, thick voice, “I am looking at you, why don’t you look at me?” It sounds like art itself begging for acknowledgment in a world too distracted to care. The recurring character Mona, revealed as a symbolic representation of art, gives the album surprising narrative weight, turning the record into a mystery surrounding who “killed” creativity and why.
Then “Everything is Chrome” swerves into industrial funk territory with sharper beats and sarcastic swagger. The groove is catchy, but underneath the shimmering electronics sits a clear sense of disgust toward performative culture and machine-fed entertainment. Xeno delivers his lines almost numbly, as if overstimulation itself has drained the joy from performance.
One of the album’s most fascinating moments arrives with the sprawling “White Critic,” featuring DaShawn Marvelle. Split into shifting halves across eight hazy minutes, the track drifts through atmospheric hip-hop and industrial ambience while dissecting cultural exploitation and criticism aimed at Black creatives. The distant vocals and churning textures create an almost dissociative mood.
Meanwhile, “T.O Gangsta / One Nation Station” plunges deeper into electronic delirium. Voices drift through reverb like drunken late-night broadcasts before the cinematic spoken-word finale arrives, sounding like a dystopian political announcement echoing from an old television set. He declares, “Their future wants one nation/One nation, in other words, one delegation, but you won’t know any of that…” talking about the unity of the world through a distinctive ideology that contradicts that of the capitalistic West.
What makes Mono Modern compelling is that it refuses polish-for-polish’s-sake. Xeno Ray JNB isn’t chasing perfection; he’s documenting exhaustion, alienation, and resistance in real time. In today’s increasingly artificial landscape, this record comes off as rebellious.
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Review by: Naomi Joan