Visible Cloaks

this new one sounds pretty good on paper but so did the last one and i hardly ever want to listen to it

anyone heard it?

https://shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/visible-cloaks-yoshio-ojima-satsuki-shibano-frkwys-vol-15-serenitatem
Visible Cloaks and Yoshio Ojima! Already got this on pre-order.

cool cover

yoshio who?

i was thinking of starting a rolling 4th world thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRxDysnjlzs

Missed this thread somehow. 'Stratum' came up on my release radar, this is really gorgeous.

Turns out a run-in with the rona is the right time to properly get to grips with Visible Cloaks. I've barely listened to anything else - including the wider constellation of stuff surrounding Spencer Doran, the Fairlight mixes and the Kankyo Ongaku compilation etc.

I need to dig around/backwards a bit more, but for now my ranking would be something like:

Kankyo Ongaku
Reassemblage
Frkwys: serenitatum
Fairlight 1 mix
Lex
S/t 1
Interior Spaces mix
Fairlight 2 mix
S/t 2

There's something incredibly soothing and welcoming in the palette of sounds, but it's more than just consolation (though there is that). The continuum with the Music From Memory label is pretty clear.

Anyway, what else is good?

If you haven't done so already you should check out the Music Interiors 2 mix, which is basically the same idea as the first Music Interiors mix and the Kankyo Ongaku comp, but with Italian ambient/minimalist/"fourth world" music instead of Japanese, and roughly from the same era:

https://soundcloud.com/visiblecloaks/music-interiors-vol-2-interni-italiani

I didn't think it would be possible for a mix to be as immersive/transportive as the first Music Interiors, but this one might actually surpass it for me

I've never got round to it. Will have a listen.

Spencer / VC is probably the single biggest influence on my listening in the last ten years. They've just opened up whole scenes, approaches and constellations of sound for me - both VC's own output, and the various mixes, old album uploads to the Root Strata blog, reissues on the Empire of Signs label... Even Spencer's twitter, where he pops up in other peoples' replies with music recommendations from his (presumably vast) collection, is a mind-expanding rabbit hole. I blurted out some sort of garbled things for all this after a gig last time VC were in London - I think maybe he thought I was insane, but I was glad to be able to thank him!

Pretty much any mix is worth listening to - most of them explore a concept that is pretty illuminating! Some favourites are:

https://www.dublab.com/archive/peak-oil-w-guest-timothy-j-fairplay-visible-cloaks-tipping-point-08-24-18/
The second half of this show is a VC mix which uses the global sound of Hosono's Omni Sight Seeing and Sakamoto's Beauty as a jumping-off point for other artists taking the same approach at the cusp of the 80s and 90s.

https://www.factmag.com/2019/11/05/visible-cloaks-fact-mix/
I think there's some sort of concept running through this one about Paul De Marinis-style speech synthesis but I'm not so sure!

https://soundcloud.com/music-for-environment/mfe002-visible-cloaks
An architecturally-inpspired mix that roams all over the place - has some moments of pure gorgeousness in there (esp the ssaliva track)

https://soundcloud.com/fakerolexxx/visible-cloaks-portland-oregon
The Ellen Zweig track on here absolutely stopped me in my tracks.

There was also a Vol 3 of Music Interiors which goes back to Japanese environmental music on NTS:
https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/music-for-interiors-volume-3-5th-september-2017

Fantastic set of links bamboohouses.