Month: November 2023

Transcendental is a word that evokes something beyond the human comprehension, something that touches a spiritual realm. I do not use this word lightly. What we do with Nude Cloak is to tempt the listener to venture into a new domain. But it is not an easy trip, one must work hard to get there.

This is why we intentionally keep some imperfections on our album, and this is why we subtly tweak these ancient and majestic instruments with electronics. It is not to fake a different setting, like a church or a club, but to spark the listener’s curiosity and awareness. Something internal; be it intellectual or spiritual.

Yes, we hope our listeners ultimately have a good time, and we dare them to open and use their own minds.

We got the opportunity to have Eidsfoss church for ourselves for four days. It was a chance to unleash our creativity and explore the depths of the room and its organ, something we could never do in our usual time constraints. In the end, the most opulent thing we did was to put a couple of microphones inside the organ. But the result was nothing short of magical – every creak and puff was amplified, and we could add effects to the sound without any feedback. Our goal was not to replicate the grandeur of a cathedral, but to create something unexpected and beautiful for our audience.

Although the organ is not part of this particular segment, we still manage to create a something special. Einar live-sampled the piano to produce dreamy and not-so-dreamy soundscapes, while Andreas used his effect machine to chop the audio and send it around the room. These unpredictable effects play into our love for controlled chaos, where we prefer to improvise rather than have everything laid out before us. We want our audience to listen, but we must listen as well. After all, music is a conversation between the performer and the listener.

We will post something featuring the organ some other time. It sounds great.