We’re from Cardiff, Wales but we’ve both moved since COVID and embraced life outside the city.

Dan: I got into music from an early age, my dad had a decent record collection and showed me how to use his turntable. I used to make loads of mixtapes of my favourite bands and songs and play them endlessly. My proper musical awakening came from my brother-in-law, who I’ve known since I was 4 years old. He got me listening to Nirvana, The Doors and Pink Floyd. I got my first guitar at the age of 14 and never looked back!

Sanders: I got into music before the internet was really a thing. My grandparents used to take me to shows when I was a little kid, and I loved getting close to the speakers so I could feel the punch of the kick drum in my chest! When I was about 8 or 9 I’d spend whole weekends in my room playing Sega Megadrive games and recording the music from them onto a tape recorder, so I was interested in sound and recording quite early on. When I started secondary school I’d just jam with friends all the time. That hasn’t really stopped, I just don’t have a megadrive anymore!

https://soundcloud.com/ritualcloak/sets/a-human-being-is-the-best-disguise/s-ZvEHaotBzve?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Ritual%20Cloak&utm_medium=email

Dan: I’d say my main inspirations musically are pretty wide-ranging. Radiohead were my second ever gig back in 2000, with Sigur Ros supporting. I already loved Radiohead but getting to see them live at such a defining time for them felt special. I’d never heard of Sigur Ros before the gig but I became a die-hard fan instantly. I’d say their influence is in Ritual Cloak’s DNA along with Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails and Kiasmos. I’ve always been drawn to experimental music that pushes boundaries and isn’t playing to the crowd.

Sanders: With Ritual Cloak I find inspiration comes from things around me, the city, the woods, walking up a mountain. I’m also inspired by my constant need to push my productions to new places. Dan and I said after the first record that we don’t want to make the same thing twice, we’re always looking for new ways to do things, digging for new sounds and exploring different techniques.

Dan: I guess when we started Ritual Cloak it was probably defined more as post-rock but as we wrote more and experimented in the studio the lines between genres began to blur as we incorporated elements of minimal techno and electronica.

Dan: On our debut album, we were pretty much figuring things out as we went along, working solely in the studio from basic piano or guitar lines. We both knew that we wanted to make something different from the bands we had previously been in and Sanders had grown into being a confident electronic producer so exploring more of that route made a lot of sense.

Our second album was mainly written and recorded separately due to COVID so we were forced to work differently. It really worked to our benefit though as we were able to record ideas as soon as they came to us and share them immediately. I think Divine Invasions sounds like a much more confident and colourful album. We weren’t afraid of leaving little mistakes in as it added to the feel of the album overall. We embraced exploring new sounds, experimenting with new effects, making guitars sound like synths and using vocals for the first time. We always push each other to try something a little different.

We always say the only rule in Ritual Cloak is there are no rules, so that really frees us up to make whatever comes out and to act on whatever we’re feeling or wanting to express at the time. We didn’t think we set out to make another album, at least not as quickly as we did. However, lockdown afforded us the time and it just kind of happened!

With A Human Being is the Best Disguise, we’ve let someone else in on the creative process. Autumn Juvenile has given the music a new vitality and raw emotion that perhaps wasn’t there before. We’re always open to trying something different for each release and collaboration certainly inspires us.

Dan: Whereas our first album was influenced by escaping the city, Divine Invasions was us confronting being confined to an urban world and processing masses of information each day. Lockdown resulted in a collection of songs that would otherwise have not come together had we continued to work in their traditional ways. The subjects of the songs ranged from Philip K. Dick (VALIS) to Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers (I Accuse History & Conversation (Blackmail)) but we also took influence from our own experiences like our close friend dying (White Noise).

Dan: Our latest release is a reworking of our debut release, with new lyrics and vocals by writer, comedian and spoken word performer Autumn Juvenile.

All lyrics are a mix of real-life lies, workplace gossip, online flirtations and (most unforgivably) pure imagination. They were written on stifling summer nights working in secure mental health units across Cardiff, in between rolling cigarettes for rapists.

Sanders: Having Autumn Juvenile on this album has taken the songs to totally new places, given them new meaning and attached new emotions to them. That’s something that would never have happened if we hadn’t had the opportunity to collaborate. We were fortunate to have a number of tracks from the first release remixed, which we put out as an EP, Ritual Cloak Remixed. This feels like a totally different beast.

Dan: We’ve both been fortunate in that we’ve both had jobs that we were able to do from home during the pandemic. We usually record at our studio in Cardiff but lockdown forced us to work separately, and in a very different way than before. At the beginning of lockdown we both bought/took home the gear we’d need and made little production setups. Being able to dip in and out at any time of the day made a huge difference when writing. We could get ideas down straight away but also give some ideas space. We’ve definitely got a collection of songs that wouldn’t have come together had we continued to work in our usual ways in the studio.

Sanders: It was really nice working like that actually, something positive to come out of the biggest upset in our lifetime. Normally we’d just get together every once in a while at the studio, and if we’re having an unproductive session it feels like we’ve wasted time, so being able to dip in and out of writing as and when inspiration struck was quite liberating. I think moving forward we’ll continue to work like this and meet at the studio when we know we have larger elements to record.

Dan: In terms of whether I think there’s hope, I’m a little reluctant to say yes. We got offered a support slot for a gig the other day and the offer was laughable. It’s like nobody has learnt anything from the pandemic. People still consume art without a thought to the price that it costs to make that art.

Dan: We’ve collaborated with a good friend of mine, Polish photographer Michal Iwanowski. We were incredibly inspired by his recent work Go Home, Polish that we wrote a song for him. We asked Michal to come into the studio to record spoken word pieces to the music in English and Polish. It’s definitely one of the best things we’ve ever done, so I’m excited to get it out there next year! Other than that we’ve started fleshing out ideas for the next album, but not putting too much pressure on ourselves to get something out straight away. 2021 has been pretty busy for us in terms of releases so it’ll be nice to give ourselves some space to work on new material.