Embrace the Manufactured Peace of Visible Cloaks' 'Reassemblage'

In the midst of almost any cultural moment, serenity can be hard to attain. It's why for centuries people have gone away to the mountains, spent time in silence, and searched deep within themselves for good. But how much more difficult is it now, when every spare moment of meditation is imperiled by the constant buzz of push notifications from The New York Times, telling you today's reason to believe that the world is ending.

I'm not sure that Visible Cloaks—the Portland-based duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile—are consciously interested in this sort of spiritual centeredness (in an interview last year they off-handedly mentioned the "cultural baggage" that many new age records carried in their native California). But their new album Reassemblage seems engaged in some way in that constant scramble for balance in trying times. Since they released a mixtape in 2010 with the stated goal of making "an investigation into fourth-world undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music," they've been interested in the more glassine sides of electronic music—utopian forms that prize stillness and silence.

But where most ambient acts stop there, in the peaceful breathwork of gasping synthesizers, Reassemblage prizes a strange sort of locomotion. The music's beatless, but each track relies on a flurry of midi-instruments battering the margins. There's digitalist mallet work that rumbles like acid rain on a hot day, sampled or synthesized water sounds that feel like rolling around in puddles of industrial runoff, or twitchy piano lines. It's easy to get caught up in the movement, to be jarred by the chatter of something like "Valve"—the melodies were interestingly transposed from the speech patterns of their collaborator Miyako Koda. But still there's a sense, despite all the digital detritus, that there's a way to remain centered in the midst of this—to mentally trace the more meandering synth lines and find tranquility in the chaotic moments. It's a welcome reminder that peace is possible, even when it seems unlikely.

Visible Cloaks' Reassemblage is out February 17 on RVNG, but you can listen to it up above right now via Resident Advisor or snag it for a temporarily discounted price on Bleep.