Visible Cloaks Return With New Album Paradessence

Visible Cloaks are back with their first full-length album in nine years. The Portland-based ambient duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile will release Paradessence on May 22 via RVNG Intl. They’ve also shared a lead single, “Disque,” which features Motion Graphics playing synthetic woodwinds. Check out a music video for that below.

We last heard from Visible Cloaks in 2019, when they shared serenitatem, a collaborative album with ambient artists Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano. Doran and Carlile released their last solo LP, Reassemblage, in 2017, and followed it up with a mini-LP, Lex, the same year. In 2019, Doran also curated the Grammy-nominated compilation Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990.

Paradessence draws its title from a portmanteau of “paradoxical” and “essence,” coined by author Alex Shakar. Per Visible Cloaks, the word embodies the oppositional-but-coexisting concepts they’re trying to explore with the new album. “Instead of creating pieces that function horizontally as environments, we wanted to conceptualize them as living material changing in space, continually in flux,” Doran shared in a press statement.

Revisit Philip Sherburne’s 2017 profile Big in Japan: Visible Cloaks and the Power of Cultural Exchange.