Visible Cloaks – Listening Beyond the Real

Visible Cloaks’ music has long occupied a space between the natural and the synthetic: sounds that can feel tactile, architectural, intimate and slightly impossible all at once. With the release of Paradescence — the project’s first full-length album in nine years — I spoke with The Cloak’s Spencer Doran for a wide-ranging conversation about process, perception and the increasingly complicated act of listening.

Spencer talks about the strange malleability of recorded sound; about mixing as an endless field of decisions; and about the practical reality of finishing work (drawing in a neat lineage lesson about Yellow Magic Orchestra). He reflects on presenting Paradescence through listening sessions, and on the possibilities opened up by spatial sound, ambisonic recording and binaural listening: technologies that can make a stereo field feel less like a flat image than a space you can move through.

The conversation also traces the cultural histories that sit around this music. From Japanese ambient and environmental music to Jon Hassell’s Fourth World ideas, Spencer talks about the difference between meaningful exchange and easy aesthetics. There is also a discussion of ambient music’s current place within streaming and playlist culture, where music designed for close attention can so often be repackaged as background atmosphere or lifestyle utility.

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Paradescence on Bandcamp.

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