Formed in 2014, Visible Cloaks have helped to highlight the work of the ambient avant garde. Through their own music, mixes and curation they have brought wider attention to musicians such as Nuno Canavarro, Lino Capra Vaccina, Iury Lech, Pep Llopis, Lena Platonos, and especially that of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Inoyama Land. It’s the latter Japanese artists that, to my ears, have the greatest influence over Visible Cloaks’ new long-player, “Paradessence”. 

One half of the Cloaks, Spencer Doran has spent decades archiving and compiling the output of these particular Eno-inspired electronic pioneers, along with that of their fellow countrymen and women whose compositions fall within a genre now known, globally, as “Kankyo Ongaku”. This is especially apparent on pieces such as “Capgras”, a spiralling, sonic shimmer of fresh water frequencies and filtered, fragmented field recordings, and “Disque”, a cool, calming cut of treated trickling. A beautiful shot of synthetic serenity, whose sounds are gently squeezed and stretched. 

Two of the album’s tracks feature collaborations with another, original Kankyo Ongaku maestro, Yoshio Ojima. “Shape” glides on graceful, glacial glissandos, romantic ripples of percussion and Satisuki Shibano’s piano. “Thinking” processes Shibano’s vocals into robotic, metallic whispers. In several places, some textures seem to be voice sourced / generated. For example, the loud, dramatic opener, “Apsis”, has ferric fanfares that recall Kraftwerk’s “Vitamin”. “Zinna” collages chopped up contrabass with hopeful human gasps and exclamations. 

Other contributors include Oona Doran, whose balloon gives rise to the fizzing, buzzing broken shortwave transmissions of the track of the same name. On “Intarsia”, Ioana Selaru’s violin is transformed into what appears to be a respectful nod to Arthur Russell’s “World Of Echo”. 

The album’s title is a term used to describe an object that contains a paradox, a conflicting set of properties. The press one-sheet here refers to a contrast of “tension and reassurance”. This concept making itself felt as a mix of the abstract and melodic. Much of the sound design revolves around intricate details such as steely machined whistling, whizzing and whirring, sucked inside out squelches and circuitry creating a crashing like surf. The musical manipulations of art installations. However, there are also harps, reeds and sections of strings. The closing “System” lets these instruments finally fully reveal themselves, and burst, almost, into song. The results a bit like a jazzier Brothers Woo. 

Visible Cloaks’ Paradessence can be ordered directly from RVNG INTL.