Visible Cloaks return to ambient world-building on Paradessence

Visible Cloaks’ Paradessence remains one of the key electronic and ambient releases from the 22 May slate. Released via RVNG Intl., it marks the Portland duo’s first full-length album in nine years, and it arrives in a very different atmosphere from the one that surrounded 2017’s Reassemblage. That earlier work connected deeply with Japanese environmental music and synthetic calm.

Paradessence seems to respond to a more unstable present: post-pandemic disorder, climate anxiety, political fracture and the overstimulation of digital life. The music does not react with noise or panic. Instead, it creates an environment full of small events: synthetic woodwinds, human voice fragments, luminous surfaces, silence, tension and sudden beauty.

Collaborators include Motion Graphics, Félicia Atkinson, Ioana Șelaru, Yoshio Ojima, Satsuki Shibano and the Componium Ensemble. For a 24 May digest, this is the slow electronic item that deserves patience. Paradessence is not ambient wallpaper. It is a designed world, one where calm and unease keep sharing the same air. Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/visible-cloaks-paradessence