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 Paradessence — 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.

On July 9th Lost and Sound celebrates it’s 8th birthday! As you probably know, the show is now monthly and has gone on a real journey since that heady time in 2018 when I left behind being a London DJ, moved to Berlin and started making these programmes. 

Lost and Sound is now fully independent, and listener support helps keep the project alive and growing. You can support the show for as little as the price of a coffee. I can’t offer Patreon-style bonus content at the moment — life is already too hectic to promise things I cannot properly deliver — but every contribution makes a real difference. Support the show

If you enjoyed the episode, follow Lost and Sound on Substack and me on Instagram, subscribe to the RSS Feed, and share the episode with someone who’d be into it. Independent journalism and independent podcasting still run on word of mouth.

Paradessence on Bandcamp.

Transcript

Why Listening Shapes Everything

Paul 0:01

Hi, Paul here, speaking to you as usual from a street in Berlin where it's midsummer but it's kind of gloomy. I hope wherever you are you're having a really lovely one. And I've been thinking a lot about listening recently. Not just what we listen to, but like how we listen to it, what gets our attention, what slips past us, and how much of that is shaped by the way we listen to music, the systems that deliver music to us. Now, for this episode of Lost and Sound, I spoke to Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks, an artist whose work makes you listen closely and sometimes question what you're hearing in the first place. But more specifically, it's a space for having deep conversations with artists who work outside the box. As you will most likely know by now, Lost and Sound is now monthly. There's no pivot to video as yet that goes with that because these shows are about slowing down, about getting into talk, about listening and creativity and culture, and hearing voices from the world of amazing music, having the space to open up and talk about this. And today you're gonna hear a conversation I had with Portland-based Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. Alongside his Visible Cloaks co-pilot Ryan Carlyle, Spencer has spent the past decade creating some of the most distinctive, ambient-leaning electronic music around. Visible Cloaks's music draws on Japanese ambient and new age music, experimental composition, innovative software approaches, and a bit of John Cagian style chance. There's this really sweet spot that a lot of Visible Cloaks's music hits between sounding synthetic and sounding natural. At the same time, sounding like you can't quite place what it is or what it's doing. It just does it and it does it really well. When I listen to Visible Cloaks' music, I'm never really sure what is artificial and what is quote unquote real. The duo have recently returned with their first full-length album in nine years, Paradescence, and it does what they're really good at. Amongst other things, that is how their sounds blend. What I feel you could kind of almost call like fourth world music. I know it's a kind of slightly questioned term these days, and we go and talk about this in the podcast. Um, and there's like little hints of like exotica going on there. Um, but it never becomes kitsch because there's such a sort of attention to detail and process going on. Spencer is also a curator, a record collector, and a composer. His compilation, Kankyō Ongaku, helped bring a wider audience to Japanese ambient, environmental, and new age music from the 1980s, whilst his work has moved between records, installations, film, and video games. So in this episode, talking with Spencer, it's not one of those chats that we have sometimes on Lost and Sound where we go deep emotionally. It's not the most intimate or warm chat, and that's not like a criticism of the chat, because I think what it does is Spencer gives a really deep, informed, and personally knowledgeful take on a lot, I think a lot of really fascinating issues that are relevant to how we listen to music, and also from the point of view of someone who's deeply invested in processes that aim towards a future-leaning music. There are some references in the conversation that you might want to dig a little deeper into, as I mentioned about fourth world music, and also uh Christopher Alexander's architectural theories, which I knew nothing about beforehand. I will try to put up some notes about this on the Substack. So if you don't follow the Substack already, it's uh the Substack is Lost and Sound. Yep, so I think it's a really fascinating conversation. We do go really, really, really, really deep. It's one of those ones where, yes, pay attention. I certainly learnt something from listening. So, what else is there? Yeah, it's a little bit of housekeeping or a little bit of like updates, updates. Yeah, I've got my first ever Bandcamp Selects radio show coming up. The lovely people at Bandcamp have invited me to come along and do a guest show. And you can hear that from July the 27th by going on to Bandcamp Daily. And I'm currently digging through a whole world of music to pick what I'm gonna play for that show. Um, as I mentioned before, you can follow Substack at Lost Unsound or follow me on Instagram at Paul Hamford. So now back to Spencer Doran from Visible Cloaks. We had this chat on May the 29th, 2026, and this is what happened.

Making Music For The Journey

Paul 6:13

This isn't your first rodeo with Visible Cloaks. Does it feel different each time a new album comes out? Is there like you're obviously carrying the momentum of the album with you, but does it feel does some what feels different this time for you?

Spencer Doran 6:28

Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a bit of relief that happens once you're done pushing towards something. For me, like the process has less to do with the end result, so much as like I mean, it sounds corny, but like the journey that you take getting there. I mean, I always think of like uh people like Arthur Russell, who spent so much of his time working on music in a way that was less about the actual product of a release or like the form that it takes that it solidifies into something that's consumable by other people, but more about like the internal route that it takes through your own kind of subconscious and places that you're like experiencing different aspects of it, and it's more this thing that's less for other people and more for yourself and more for your collaborations and more for the kind of exchanges that happen internally when you're creating something. So when a record finally comes out, it it feels funny because you know it's it's done. Like it's that part of the process is ended. Then obviously things take other forms in like you know, live performance and presenting things in a certain way. We've been doing these like uh album listening sessions for the record, which is kind of a new thing, and it's like a really different way of seeing people experience the record and then having like more of an interactive uh like Q ⁇ A and stuff. So it feels more like you're like at a gallery presenting your work or something like that, which is kind of a different, nice dynamic to explore. But for the most part, yeah, it's a relief to be done working on it. Uh we worked on it for way too long. Um, I guess, as you can see in a lot of the press materials, it's all the first things people mention is like, oh, there hasn't been an album in nine years, which isn't exactly true. Like, we did some collaborative stuff, we've done some smaller projects, and it feels good to have it in the review mirror to a certain degree at this point, even though it's kind of in the middle of uh, you know, like the whole press run, the whole touring, like all that kind of stuff. But yeah, having it completed feels good.

Paul 8:49

Yeah, that's interesting. Um, so it's that point where I think my experiences of having stuff out in the world is that feeling of something being unchangeable. Things very rarely ever feel completely finished. There's just a point quite often where various factors coalesce together with something feeling ready rather than necessarily ever finished. I wonder what like your relationship with something being finished is as opposed to something being kind of like ready.

Spencer Doran 9:22

Well, I mean it's funny in the digital eras that I mean, if you wanted to, you can go back and you know, like pull a Kanye or whatever. Yeah, I'm a fixed wolves kind of thing, like go back and re-upload your mistakes that you uh want to fix. But yeah, I mean uh I've also talked a lot about this in this um talking about this record, in that the thing that really brought it to existence was having a deadline,

Deadlines That Force A Finish

Spencer Doran 9:49

yeah, which is something I kind of like not entirely self-imposed, but like I really tried to force uh Matt, um, who runs RVNG to just be like, you know, we need to have a deadline because that's what will help us force us to finish it. Because we will tinker with things endlessly forever, me especially. Um, and that was like another reason why I brought on my friend Joe Williams, who does motion graphics to mix the record with me, because like for me that's the process that is the most uh endlessly tinkerable of like you know, turning different elements kind of up and down like 2DB or something like that. But um having an external deadline and then an external like perspective in mixing uh were both really crucial aspects of like finalizing things and making feel like they're quote unquote done. You know, even though you know, if I went back and listened to the record now, I'm sure there would be a million things, which we've actually had to do, you know, obviously doing these like listening things it can be a little painful with being like, oh, you know, I wish I would have done X, Y, and Z. But yeah, I mean our process is I would say glacial uh is in terms of like creating a finished work. So that deadline was was crucial to making it happen. And something else I've mentioned before uh in other interviews is I was reading about the way that the YMO records were made in in the 80s, you know, like uh like BGM and Technodelic, like the ones that I think of as being like the real kind of masterpieces, and like the first thing that would be determined for those albums would be the release date, and then the work backwards from there, and like you know, the deadline for the lyric sheet to be printed would be when that would be when the lyrics would be written, or like you know, things like this, like so there there being this like force that's sort of like pushing you toward a goal, I think is really crucial. Otherwise, I could just work on things forever and it it kind of like you know lights a fire under your ass, so to speak, but like also gives you like something tangible that you can work towards.

Album Listening Sessions As Gallery

Paul 12:10

Yeah, I mean I just wanted to dig in a little bit to the idea of uh doing the listening sessions as well for for the release because I think that's a really fascinating idea. Like you mentioned, it's a little bit like makes it more like a gallery type situation. Um, I was also that idea of having finished music or or getting music ready for the deadline and then doing like a listening thing is quite interesting, isn't it? Because usually when we do performance, you know, you're engaged with the performing, and that kind of keeps that momentum going and it kind of keeps the feeling of something, perhaps you know, like the way music mutates over live performance. But when you're listening back to it and you know, in that environment, what kind of feelings came up for you?

Spencer Doran 12:55

Uh yeah, I mean it the it's ends up being more like thinking about your album as like a film or something. And I take a lot of care to like the editing process and kind of like you know, sculpting spaces between things, like feeling like where the cut uh happens and stuff like that. And I mean I kind of learned a lot from reading about the way that people in cinema, like the way the editing happens, where like, for example, you always want to work standing up, not sitting in a chair, because you can feel the cuts happen a little more, you can kind of like move your body into them and stuff. Um, so when you're playing a record stack instead of performing live, you know, it's very different because you have that idealized version of of all the pieces that you're presenting, and uh it kind of feels closer to having this like control over the final outcome, which is kind of ironic because the way that we work is very not about creating a specific result. It's very like setting up these different conditions that allow things to arise and then sculpting the results from that process, and then kind of like uh you know, fine-tuning things like using more like technical mixing processes to draw out certain aspects of sounds or like cut them off in certain ways and kind of shape them. So it's not like we go into making an album or a song or kind of anything, uh having this specific idea that we're trying to enact and best reproduce and most accurately transmit to the listener. It's more like allowing these things using various different kind of techniques that we've developed over the years to kind of self-arrange themselves and then take those results and kind of collage them, manipulate them, sculpt them. Um, and you know, uh a lot of discussion of the record I've seen really picks up on this very sculptural aspect of making the work and about treating it more like uh material that you're shaping into something like you might not know what that something is. And I think that like uh there's this very I guess non-representational approach to trying to make our stuff pieces where we're not necessarily trying to recreate something that we're seeing in our heads, but we're instead uh doing experiments and kind of seeing what happens. And you know, part of the reason why that takes so long is you know, when you're doing a very imprecise uh process to to make music, it it can be very slow to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff. And kind of like you know, we have so many discarded experiments and and things that didn't work. And even in creating these sort of like music systems that we use to generate pieces, like sometimes you'll have to render you know 20 versions of them and then find the one that that feels the best. So when it comes to like listening to that end result in this, you know, kind of idealized setting, like almost like a gallery or like a you're screening a film or something, it's a bit funny because like these pieces are were very alive, and in making this album and you know, pressing it on a LP or like doing a digital release, they kind of become dead in that way. And you know, uh the technology really isn't there yet to have these really generative versions of the pieces be something that people can recall, like uh you know, maybe you could do like a web version of it or something. But I mean I think of like like the Cone Pro and like you know, Brian You know's releases in the mid-90s where he was trying to make these versions of pieces that were different every time you played them. Uh but the only way that was possible was through like CD-ROM software, and you're sort of cutting off uh a pretty large percentage of the people that could experience your work by doing something like that. Um so it's strange hearing this final form of something as being this immovable, uh like I don't want to say dead because it feels uh inaccurate, but like no longer able to be manipulated and contorted because that's you know part of my experience living with these pieces is being able to kind of reach in and uh uh and shape them and touch them and fix what I might think might be bad about them or try to improve certain things. So listening back to this frozen version of them is is always a little strange for me.

Building Virtual Space In Stereo

Paul 17:54

Are you thinking very visually when you're composing?

Spencer Doran 17:57

Yeah, I don't really think so. I mean I think a lot about how you're creating within this virtual space. And you know, this can be more kind of like an architectural way of thinking about things or the way of you're sort of like constructing a building in this environment. And when you're working like with two-channel stereo, you have a very much have this spatiality that you're working within. And you know, traditionally in the way that recorded music has worked, uh, you know, since it's it's very short history now, if you think about it in terms of like human listening. There also is this sort of like attempt to try to recreate the experience of listening to something in a room. Like either you're reproducing a concert hall, or you're you know, like recording a jazz ensemble, you know, or a rock group, and you're you know, you're trying to recreate this experience of listening. And like, you know, when people talk about like audiophile recordings, it's usually things that sound the most realistic and sound, you know, if you play them back in a nice stereo system, they would sound like they're there in the room with you or something. But for me, that's not you know, that's very limiting in terms of what the possibilities of recording is, uh, because you're really creating this virtual space, and in that virtual space you can do all kinds of weird things that aren't possible when you're just sitting there listening to a band play or what have you. And you know, that it comes very much out of the tradition of uh like, you know, dub uh and you know, this idea of using things like reverb, say, or delay or filtering to kind of play with the virtuality of that space and kind of draw out how illusionary uh all of it is. And when you're sort of like hearing a reverberant echo and then it cuts off, you know that that's something that's not real. Um and also like I like to play a lot with like the stereo field and things moving, um, things coming into focus uh out of being out of focus, or like you know, things going into like a reverb and then coming back out of it uh more directly to kind of draw out this like artificiality. But then also like we got really interested in using things like ambisonic recording, like uh capturing like a spherical uh space around something and then manipulating that in ways that aren't possible, um, and then decoding things binaurally so it you know it feels like they're moving in this um sort of way around the listener, stuff like that. So you can also like when you're working like we do with a lot of these uh virtual instruments, kind of like VST technology, like physically modeled things, things that are uh you know, obviously attempting to be real, but have the great potential to push beyond that and do things that are like uh you know kind of superhuman. Uh like I think a lot about this guy Noachsevsky, um, who had this great essay about his concept of the super performer, of that, you know, in sort of modern studio technology, we're able to create these uh virtual musicians that can do things that real musicians can't, and that really opens up the possibilities of what music can do uh and what writing for these kind of quote unquote virtual performers, like uh the limitlessness of this uh kind of like possibility space. Um so in using these virtual instruments, like pushing them kind of beyond what they're capable of doing, which uh is actually something that I was first Kind of clued into by um my friend Joe, who actually who I mentioned who helped mix this record. Um he was doing stuff like this way back in like I don't know 2012 or something is when he first started sending me these kind of pieces. So for me, that's like very inspirational to see like how you can push beyond uh like the capabilities of the human or like the capabilities of uh what a real performer would be able to do. And then you can also uh create these systems where uh things interact in a way that maybe wouldn't be possible for real improvisational players where you know you have five instruments that are all doing this extremely complicated melody that you know it you would have to be hyper-virtuosic to be able to all play together in use in, where you know, in a in a DAW you can just copy and paste and just like take your MIDI and and just stack it and like maybe pitch some of them up a fifth, pitch some of them down, you know, things like that. So uh I also think about there's this Brian Eno uh kind of very throwaway riff that he gave in this documentary from the early 90s where he talks about this idea of uh artistic conspiracy where like if you looked at a Jackson Pollack painting and you thought about, you know, he's splattering the paint in this sort of way, you know, you you you look at it, you sort of think about what you understand his process might be. And then you take the same painting you and next to it there is the exact same identical painting. And then you would think, wait a second, you know, this isn't there's something is going on here, there's some sort of conspiratorial uh aspect of of how this was created. Like it makes you call into question like what you think might actually be happening. And I really like this moment where you think you understand what's going on, and then uh like in experiencing it, it sort of makes you question your own judgment. And it it's very rare to kind of have these experiences listening to audio. Um, but audio is like uh of anything, like this very immediate uh thing that you kind of can't replay your own perception of it. So uh a lot of times when I have experiences where I'm trying to understand what's going on, and then maybe I don't like maybe like you're tuning into a radio station and you hear uh a kind of music, and like maybe you don't have a reference like to contextualize it, and you think it's one thing and then it does something else, and then it like you're very confused for a second. Like I really kind of enjoy and embrace these kind of moments. And in creating these pieces that are based, you know, on MIDI, you can kind of do the same sort of thing as this Jackson Pollock painting where like uh something that sounds like improvisation, all of a sudden there's another person that joins in that's doing the exact same thing that you would think like, oh, you know, obviously that they've planned this together, or like, you know, that so that's something that I'm really uh excited to explore. And in the live context, it kind of becomes even more of a thing because we use a lot of uh like live MIDI, like Ryan has a virtual uh wind instrument, like I have a you know, virtual mallet controller and a piano and things like that. Uh, and you can create these uh ensembles uh based on one single input where maybe you're sending some breath control and MIDI notes in, and it's controlling like five different instruments all playing together, and they're all maybe doing a slightly different thing, or they're sort of time delayed from each other, or and then you can create these things that if you were to sit and listen to it, maybe sound like a group of people playing together, but you could just see there's one person controlling those instruments on stage. So becoming very like like I want to say illusionary, but uh you can't trust what's happening. Um you can't your ears maybe deceiving you, like that kind of a thing. And I think that's very exciting.

Blurring Field Recording And Synthesis

Paul 26:20

Definitely. Um I love the way with with visible cloaks's work, the the blurring of digital technology with something that to me always has like an element of the natural world as well to it. How do you see like I mean, I think you've kind of answered this really, but like the way that technology can extend the natural world?

Spencer Doran 26:44

Yeah, I mean the the use of all different kinds of instruments is also like a oddly enough, like a Noachzeevsky thing of it, I think he calls it open palette, of like, you know, the fact that you're able to access all these uh representations of instruments from everywhere kind of opens the possibilities for the composer. Whereas you know, traditionally you'd be limited to what was on hand uh in the ensemble you were working with. Um but like you know, VST technology kind of cracks this open. But in terms of the natural world, like again, like we really like playing with this what's possible in the studio of taking representations of natural things and sort of playing with the perspective of them. And on the record, there's a lot of things that sound like field recordings, maybe, but are actually entirely generated um virtually, uh like using synthesis or some sort of like extended process from like a different sort of sort of source that might not be what you think it sounds like it is. Um but then also layering those with real recordings to sort of like blur that boundary. There's a lot of uh using ambisonic field recordings of, like I said, recording the sphere around you, but then taking that listening perspective and uh contorning it in ways that wouldn't be possible in the natural world where like you know, things are spinning in this like um gyroscopic kind of motion around the listening point. Or uh I got really into using ultrasound of recording things that are sort of beyond human hearing range, um pitching them back down into human hearing range to sort of uh capture these things that might be happening above our capabilities of sensory perception. And like we taught this workshop in Pyrenees Mountains through this program called Camp, um, which was like a kind of like locational residency. And a big part of that was sort of teaching these processes of like going out into the world, uh, capturing things and then bringing them back into the studio and manipulating them in ways that aren't so much about creating this additional layer of the natural world on top of your composition to kind of give it life or something, and more about taking that uh those sources and then contorting them and manipulating them and creating these things that uh might feel real but have very unsettling and unnatural aspects to them and like this sort of thing. So, yeah, I mean it obviously in a lot of kind of contemporary music in the sphere that we're working within, like it's very easy to just like take a field recording, throw it on top of your you know, your synth noodle or whatever, and you know, just kind of make this thing that sounds better. And oftentimes it does, it is like a nice little uh you know, extra thing to give stuff depth. But like we're less interested in that and more interested in like drawing the artifice out of that process of like when you're trying to create this uh space for the listener that's obviously not like you're not really in a forest listening to something like that. And uh, you know, I think drawing out like what's dishonest and fake about that process is like a really interesting uh thing to explore.

Why We Crave Sonic Realism

Paul 30:34

Yeah, and I think it goes back into what you were saying beforehand about like the the majority of the history of recorded music being about like the recreation of the real and the kind of uh the I guess the limitations of of thinking that way, although obviously great music is is made that way. Um there's still this, I guess there's just this just like insistence on like reality. I mean, for you, what do you feel that that why do you feel people are so often or we are so often drawn to recreations of reality rather than the uh the running with like the steps that can kind of lead out out of that?

Spencer Doran 31:19

Uh I mean I don't know why people enjoy that. But um yeah, I mean I guess it's comforting, like it's very human to listen to a person who's singing, uh, you know, uh or like uh hear music being played communally in this setting that you know when you're not able to sit in a room with like the masters of you know, like I'm not able able to go and sit in Geordie Saval's living room and hear him play or something like that. So like listening to this idealized version of that is to me like very understandable. Um, but I think that's just one aspect of what's possible uh with recorded music technology, and you know, like obviously so much kind of music is very electronic in a way that like you know those things don't exist in the natural world. Uh and that's part of what has always drawn me to things like you know, like FM synthesis, is that you know, it's able to try to attempt to represent real versions of instruments, like you know, when you go and listen to like the DX7s trying to make a piano sound or a flute or something. But what's really more exciting about it is that it's able to make these sounds that don't really happen in the same way in nature, and that you're able to kind of explore realms of sound that have less to do with what has come before them and more to do with what is possible, the things that people haven't heard before. And in working with synthesis, like that's to me like the exciting um dimensions of it is that like you're able to make new different kinds of sounds and not just recreate other kinds of sounds, even though you know using like uh these like physically modeled things where you're you know like you're emulating a saxophone in a very naturalistic way, to me, we're not trying to just like make that saxophone sound real or make that you know or an instrument just do what it normally does, but take that and push it beyond what's capable. And uh I became really drawn to using things like uh there's this piano modeling uh technology called piano tech, um, which very convincingly um entirely through synthesis generates piano sounds kind of using like Carpalus Strong, things like that. Um, but you know, you're able to very deeply control different aspects of that, of like, you know, string length or like how responsive the hammers are, things like that. Uh and then I became really into just kind of throwing all these parameters in flux, you know, putting like LFO modulation on all of them at different rates, so the piano is kind of like contorting in size and shape as it's being played, you know, in a way that you know obviously is very extremely not possible in reality. Um, you'd have to have really elaborate uh technology to do something like that in the in the real world, but like it in software you can do it, you know, with four clicks or something. So for me, creating these instruments that are like doing not what you think they should be doing, uh like that's uh more of the possibility of that kind of space. And you know, the people that make these sort of things don't intend that uh necessarily. Um but I I think it's really uh really fun more than anything. Yeah, yeah.

Fourth World Music And Cultural Exchange

Paul 34:50

Another aspect there is the the way that your music does draw in elements of, I guess, for the lack of a better word, I'd call kind of global sounds. And um, but at the same time, it does seem very conscious of like problems around like terms like exotica or or like I know you've spoken quite a lot in the past about like the the kind of fourth world concept. And I was wondering for you, like as someone who's obviously very aware of sometimes like I guess the problematic nature of of like sort of assembled global sounds, how do you navigate that yourself?

Spencer Doran 35:35

Yeah, I mean, I if you think of like the history of like the concept of world music as being this thing that's kind of like the premier uh sound of like the maybe like the 90s uh globalist globalization kind of era where you know opening up capital flows across different markets kind of affords uh this theoretically affords this kind of cultural exchange that kind of arises at a new future where you know communities are in conversation in a way that wasn't possible before. Um and you know, uh we've obviously done a lot of collaboration with musicians in Japan, and like to me that kind of cultural exchange is really exciting. Um but when you look at like the original intentions of, say, John Hassle's idea of the fourth world of like, you know, there is this new kind of culture that's gonna arise out of this exchange that's accelerated by technology, and you sort of look at what actually happened uh, you know, throughout the 90s, and then you sort of arise like finally at this very homogenized version, uh, you know, where you have like Putumayo CDs or Whole Foods or something like that. To me, it's like ends up being very disappointing. And then sort of like the trend with fourth world music, uh, kind of in like record collecting and kind of music writer circles. That was this is very much something that was very active around when we assemblage came out, where you know, there was a lot of these, like uh that was a popular way of sort of reframing uh a lot of music. And for me, it had a lot more to do with just these sort of like aesthetic signifiers that had less to do with actual cultural exchange and more to do with just like the kind of sound fonts that people were using or like the kind of uh instruments that they're you know, like you throw a anbira on a song and all of a sudden it's you know fourth world or something like that. So for me to see that happening was like pretty frustrating when I feel like that that idea was something that was like you know, very radical and very like uh there was so much possibility in it, and it had such a utopian kind of vision to it, and that utopian vision uh kind of became very secondary to this very uh I don't know how to describe it, but like just like the way that things sounded. And specifically with with John Hassel, you know, he had such a signature sound of like, you know, using a harmonizer, pitched up a fifth, played with these instruments in a certain expressive way, which for him was a very deep process. You know, he studied with Panit Pranath, you know, he he really understood uh the way that a lot of these different forms worked. But when you start like people start throwing that term around, it just kind of becomes like, oh, anything with a harmonizer, you know, sound you know, that's fourth world, or like something with like a hand drum or you know, these things that are to me very like surface level uh attributes of what what that sound is. Um and then like part of the reason why I got so interested in the music of, say, Sakamoto, Osano, is that they were like uh taking this idea very seriously. And uh there's this very interesting thing that happens, especially in the late 80s, where Sakamoto becomes this sort of figurehead of like the world music movement. Um, and you know, he you know creates these albums with like kind of like a who's who of kind of like the international music market of, you know, like Yosan and Dur from Italy Dunhar and even like Brian Wilson or things like on beauty and things like that, where he's sort of like very actively taking this concept of the world citizen uh and sort of positioning himself outward um towards the global music market in a way that um was a very new kind of way of thinking about a musician interacting with the world. And then Hosano, kind of on the flip side, is like doing the opposite, where he's uh you know, working with all these musicians internationally, you know, going to Algeria and you know collaborating with musicians from Okinawa and this sort of thing, and then taking that and internalizing it into uh the internal Japanese uh music market and then not creating this thing that goes out to the world. It's more like taking all these influences and drawing them in. And for me, this is like the most uh honest and real version of this idea of the fourth world, where you're either trying to make this idealized version of all these cultures interacting, uh, and then positioning that towards the global stage, or you're taking it within your own culture and sort of drawing um all these things internally and kind of like you know, for Hostana was this very like working kind of with the Pan-Asian diaspora and like all the sort of like different aspects that are very overlapping in a lot of um kind of musical lineages in that in that region where like you know, the Alkinawan scale is the same thing as the Indonesian scale, it just has a different root note and things like that. So for me, looking at the way that the idea of the fourth world existing in our kind of contemporary era era, it's just been kind of like a frustrating thing to to view. And working like on records like reassemblage, it was sort of like very aware of that and kind of trying to take uh those ideas and and kind of poke holes in them and sort of like see uh where that might be a very confusing way of uh thinking about things.

Paul 41:32

Yeah, yeah.

Streaming Mood Music And The Market

Paul 41:33

Um another aspect I think of is that um the whole concept of like listening and listening culture um has been something that since visible cloaks first started, or even since you started as cloaks, has really like taken on new connotations in terms of like streaming culture, in terms of like like deliberate mood music. I don't know if you've read Liz Pelley's book, uh Mood Machine. She uh she interviewed me for it.

Spencer Doran 42:07

Oh, yes, of course. Yes, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, um there's a chapter there where I talk about sort of like the history of music in relation to Kankyo and Gaku and the way that a lot of those musicians were actually trying to articulate something that was in fact the exact opposite of this idea of mood and that it was very much in reaction to the musac efication of uh um things in Japan in that time.

Paul 42:32

And yeah, yeah. Um no, that's great. I saw I totally forgot that's that's quite early on in the book, isn't it? When they're talking a lot about um the history of musak and and the so I think like the the comments person, yeah. Yeah, and and I think there was some really interesting stuff there about um the kind of political nature of ambient music and how modern streaming culture has kind of taken the kind of music elements of that and and kind of commodified it. And I I was wondering like what your take is on that, because to me it seems like it's it's it's not so much about the music or it's not it's more than the music, it's more about like how something can be positioned and sold as a lifestyle, or was it like a sort of a accompaniment to life?

Spencer Doran 43:22

Yeah, like a lifestyle modification tool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, obviously I think a lot about this stuff and seeing our own music, uh, obviously we exist in the streaming ecosystem because you have to as a musician, it's like you could performatively withdraw yourself from it, but it you're not really gonna be accomplishing much by doing that. And it's very hard to make a living as a musician, so kind of you have to maybe embrace these uh like vectors for uh for income in a way that you in an ideal world uh wouldn't have to. But like I think as a musician, I I'm very much aware of the different contexts in which our work exists in. And I don't want to say that I think one is like superior than the other. Obviously, like when you're work creating work, you want people to be engaged with it in a in a certain level. But you have to be aware that, you know, there is beautiful ways to engage with music that don't necessarily take the ideal form that you're you're thinking of. And especially when like reassessing things like Kakyongaku and the sort of like history that it has, specifically in the corporate world in Japan, like the bubble economy and like um the way that a lot of these musicians were working in tandem with like the building boom there, where because there was so much money available, they were able to kind of smuggle these more avant-garde ideas into the mainstream, put them in like buildings or on TV or like in commercial advertising, things like that. Um so like it's hard for me to kind of cast judgment upon this sort of way of engaging with music because I think that any way that people can engage with something is valid. Uh and I find as much joy in like the design of like the alert sound on my washing machine as as I do like with anything else. And I think a lot about the you know, Windows 95 startup sound thing that you know you're trying to compact a symphony into this like small sort of micro segment. And to go back to Sakamoto again, like his like Nokia ring tones are like to me as beautiful as any of the other sort of albums or uh you know things that he he's done. So for me, there's not really this hierarchy between high and low. Uh like obviously when you're creating an album uh that's sort of like meant to be taken in as a whole, like that is how you're designing it for an idealized version, but then you're also aware that you know people are going to be listening to this in this very decontextualized way, or like songs are being plucked out and put on playlists or songs are being used for this and that. And so uh for me, like being aware of the different levels of engagement that people have with art it is something that kind of helps you uh not be so like firm with your way that you want people to engage with things. So I mean obviously, yes, like I struggle a lot with this version of contemporary listening that's about you know like focusing at work or like you know, like trying to be a better like subject uh within the sort of systems that we find ourselves in, uh, unless about this sort of like activation of something internal or about you know like communicating uh emotional feelings, but you know, that sort of stuff is possible, like in all these different layers of of engagement. So it for me it's kind of hard to really firmly denounce any sort of direction for that. Like I've also worked on uh a lot of different kinds of projects that are beyond what the traditional uses of music are. Like I I worked on this app called Wave Paths, which is um there's a few other people that have worked on it, like Careless Cloverdale and some other kind of musicians in um our sphere have, but it's uh an app that's designed for therapists to use in clinically administered psychedelic uh use. So like being able to really finely tune this, what's essentially a generative music system uh to align with people's psychedelic experience or uh ketamine or uh like uh there's a few different versions of it. Um and it's this thing that's like it when you think of like there's all these sort of you know apps like Calm or whatever, like designed for you know pseudo meditation kind of practice or whatever have you. Um but this is instead like this very technical uh system that can very deeply tune different emotional states. And then when you think about like what this sort of like playlist version of mute music is trying to do, it's very kind of like a similar thing in this phrase kind of like slapdash way, but you know, this is very different. It's like a system that's designed to draw you very intensely into these very strong emotions to kind of help um people process, like in this like therapy setting. So for me, it's like um I think this stuff is interesting. It's what what I have a hard time with is when you take a piece of music and you frame the usage of it towards you know eliciting a mood or creating a certain uh kind of environment to help you with something externally, and that's like the end of its purpose. Like me, it's like like it's like a means versus the end kind of thing, where for me like there are a lot of different possibilities for music, but this playlist version it is one of the most frustrating to kind of see your work exist in. But I mean I think that that way of engaging with art that's made by humans is kind of like something that's uh very soon gonna become redundant because all that music is gonna be AI generated like in in 10 years and you no one will be the wiser. I mean, if it's not already. Yeah. So like for me, it's like uh you know, it's unfortunate that um like when your living relies on like something like that to see that kind of uh those potentialities for making a living kind of disappear, but like uh it's almost like that music is almost generated artificially anyway, so it it's kind of hard to get too upset about it.

Positive Space And Composing With Silence

Paul 50:28

You mentioned a couple of things earlier on about like sort of Nokia ringtones and stuff that wouldn't traditionally be seen as music, but as just sound, you know, that is in our environment. And I did read that silence plays quite an important role in paradescence, um, and that you took influence from architectural theorist Christopher Alexander's concept of positive space. And I was wondering if you could just elaborate a little bit on what that means, what what positive space is and how you took the influence from it.

Spencer Doran 51:00

Yeah, I mean, uh he has this great series of books called The Nature of Order, which is something he wrote toward the end of his life. You know, he's kind of most famous for this book Pattern Language, which is this very uh very useful series of what he calls patterns or like kind of like ideas of laying out things, and it scales from as small as like you know, the interior design of your house to like the design of a city or something like that. And there's like a series of books that he wrote, uh Timeless Way of Building is like a another one in this sort of same format, um, that are very practical in terms of architecture and you know, ways to sort of problem solve. You know, like you're laying out your house and you want the living room to be in the center between the two bedrooms so that the two bedrooms aren't yeah, you don't have to listen to the the room next to you. Just simple stuff like that. Yeah. But you know, in nature of order, he he kind of scales this up to this very like kind of like cosmic level where it comes more about like the the nature of matter and like seeing uh like the idea of the self as being in the core uh of of all existence. It's it gets almost very like spiritual kind of towards the end. But um in the earlier parts of the the first of the four books, um, he has what he calls the the 15 properties of giving something life. And when he talks about giving things life, it's about like making them feel like they're a living thing and not like a dead uh kind of lifeless environment. And he thinks a lot about the way that kind of contemporary life is sort of designed, like when you're talking about like designing a city and you're trying to maximize the number of people that you can put into it, and you know, it's like this very top-down version of the way that things um are created. But he thinks that like uh things that are more living kind of arise more naturally. So you sort of like take like the example of like the early maps of Rome or something as being these things that sort of like grew uh in a way. When you look at them, they look more like uh like living structures that emerged uh naturally as opposed to this like very grid uh max, like trying to fit the most number of people in a building so you make X, Y, and Z decisions. So uh these 15 properties are something that I kind of can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but like for me, the most important one for my compositional practice was this idea of positive space, which the first example he gives is there's this famous T bowl, um, which I think is actually Korean, but it's written about in uh a lot of uh books about sort of like Japanese aesthetics and things, where he's he says that the reason why this T bowl is such like a beautiful and perfect object is because in the way that it's shaped, it's very conscious of how it's shaping the space around it in the sort of same way as it's shaping itself. And that when you're creating something that exists in space, uh not only are you shaping the thing, the the space around the thing also becomes shaped, and that space having it around it being beautiful is as important as the thing itself being beautiful. So it's like not thinking of the space around it as being like this void of nothingness that is existing in, but sort of like taking this view that all these things are kind of interconnected, uh that when you're creating something like in this space that could be considered like absence or something, you're actually um shaping the absence in the same sort of way. And he talks about like uh again talking about like these early maps of Rome where like the public spaces are uh very potent for life and you know they're very beautifully uh sort of existing at, but they exist not because they were designed as spaces, but because the buildings around them formed this space that allowed that space to exist. Um he draws a lot of examples sort of like from the history of art, but also like from the history of the physical world. Um and like, you know, when you drop like a porcelain uh piece of something and it cracks, like these cracks create all these different little environments uh or like different little shapes that exist in the void as much as they exist in the thing themselves. So when you talk about that in terms of uh composing and music, and you have this um starting out, you obviously you have silence as your place that you're creating sounds within. And you treat that space in the same way that you would treat the sound itself. Um, these things really tend to shape each other. So when you're creating a sound and all those frequencies sort of fall off or cut off or um rise or fall, like you're shaping that silence around the sound in the same way that you're shaping the sound itself. And this also has a lot of connection, I realized, to um this idea that actually comes from Satoshi Ashikawa, who's sort of like one of the conceptual architects of Kanky Ngaku, where he talks about this idea of the figure and ground, um, which is something that comes from like uh Gestalt psychology. If you think of the classic example, is like this vase that looks like two faces, depending on if you're looking at the figure or the ground with the foreground and the background, it's hard to tell which is which. And his idea was that uh, and this comes from a very like post-cage uh kind of view on silence as not being a silence, but as being this um thing that inevitably is an environment in itself, and that when you're creating sounds and composing, like what is the foreground and what and is in the background is kind of an ambiguous relationship, like what the piece is and what the environment is when you're listening to it, is not something that you know when you think about it in a more kind of conceptual way, it like there's no difference between those two things. Um, and those two things are like kind of shaping each other. So when you hear his a lot of his early work, it has a lot of like single notes that fall into silence, and like that has more to do with treating that silence as part of the composition itself and treating it as this like space of absence or space of blankness or like this thing that doesn't have anything in it. Um, and he was really against this idea of creating sound that was withdrawn from the world in this kind of like absolute way, where uh I mean, I guess in our kind of contemporary life, it would be like headphone listening or something where you're withdrawing yourself from the environment in which you're in, and you're just sort of cutting yourself off from that world in this sort of place that's detached from time or detached from uh existence or perception. Um instead, like it this is very much more active when you're performing in a space, say uh you're existing within that space and you're engaging with that space in the act of um performing, but also in the act of composing, because you're choosing what you want the listener to sort of focus in on. And you know, it when you give a lot of silence and space to a piece, it it allows you to be aware of that environment in a way that maybe you wouldn't necessarily be if you were sort of isolated from it in headphones or something. So um, I mean, I don't necessarily think of our music in those terms, but I think that those ideas are very interrelated where you're aware of your environment and silence sort of forces you to be aware of it because uh otherwise you you wouldn't hear it because it you would be too focused on maybe the what what you would think would be the foreground, which is you know what you're trying to focus on.

Album Details And Closing Notes

Paul 59:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that was me, Paul Hamford, talking with Spencer Duran from Visible Cloaks. And we had that conversation on May the 29th, 2026. Thank you so much, Spencer, for sharing your time and thoughts with me there. Visible Cloaks's first full-length album in nine years, Paradescence, is out now on the RVNG Intel label. I've probably said that wrong, but I'm stood outside on the street in Berlin and it started spitting with rain, and so I'm kind of just like whittling through this before like my equipment gets like completely drenched. The theme music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound is by Tom Giddens. And the usual obligatory bit of housekeeping about doing podcasts and stuff like that is if you enjoyed what you heard and you haven't already, please do give the show a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice if you've got five or ten minutes at hand. It is really, really appreciated. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed listening. We'll be back next month for another fine show, and I hope you tune in for that. And yeah, if you haven't already, follow me on Instagram at Paulhamford and follow the Substack at Lost and Sound. Hope whatever you do today, you have a really lovely one, and yeah, I'll chat to you next month.