Big Noble’s new album It’s Later Than You Think (out August 15th exclusively through Bandcamp) is an appeal to the imagination: an invitation to create movies in your mind. That’s what happens when a great musician make an album with an acclaimed sound designer — someone who creates all the nonmusical sounds in films. The musician is Daniel Kessler, Interpol guitarist, and the sound designer is Joseph Fraioli, who created the soundscapes for Christopher Nolan’s science fiction action-thriller Tenet and Jonathan Nolan’s Fallout TV series, as well as producing sound installations for the Museum of Modern Art and Lady Gaga, among many other sonic inventions.

“I want It’s Later Than You Think to be the soundtrack to the listener’s own personal movie,” Kessler says, “when they’re walking down the street, when they’re looking out the window of a train, when they’re watching people walk by a window in a café. It’s their movie.” Each track on the album has a different mood, like different scenes in a film. “We both love how music can alter your perception of your environment,” Fraioli adds.

Generally speaking, Kessler creates the simple seed of the tracks with his trademark guitar tone and poignant harmonic palette and Fraioli adds further instrumentation and manipulates it as pure sound, creating an immersive, evocative sonic experience. “Sound design is about elevating the drama of whatever you’re working on,” Fraioli explains, “and it’s similar when producing music: you think about things more visually.” Adds Kessler, “I can say something like, ‘Can we make it feel like we’re up in the clouds?’ And he can actually do it.” That’s exactly what happens on “No Sharing in Tech House” when, three-quarters of the way through the song, everything disappears and yes, it feels like you’re floating in mid-air.

Before Interpol, Kessler worked at an electronic music label, which is how he met Fraioli, who had recently signed to the label as Datach’i. Fast-forward to 2014: Kessler had made four albums with Interpol and “I wanted to push myself into unfamiliar areas,” he says, “and do things where I don’t know what’s going to happen.” As Datach’i, Fraioli was working all by himself — collaborating was a refreshing change. The two friends recorded their 2015 debut, First Light, in Kessler’s living room in New York City, with Kessler improvising on guitar and Fraioli manipulating the recordings using modular synthesizers and effects units, and incorporating various found sounds.

It took them a decade to get around to doing a follow-up — “We like to take our time and do it right,” Fraioli quips. This time, Kessler recorded his parts at his home in Spain, composing the way he always does: picking up a beloved old acoustic guitar and improvising while watching a movie. Then Fraioli would work on the tracks in his “laboratory,” as Kessler calls it, 6,000 miles away in Los Angeles. This time, though, Fraioli played a little more of the music and provided the seed for “Marine Layer.” “Joseph’s guitar playing has a lonesomeness and a longing to it,” Kessler observes. “He’s wailing at the end of ‘En Camino.'”

Where First Light was relatively abstract, It’s Later Than You Think is more song-oriented, and yet still adapts to whatever environment the listener is in. The title track announces the cinematic sense of the record, then “The Palms” fills the ears with a velvety, enveloping texture; a low-end kick lends a subtle sense of urgency. “Spinnaker” sports a catchy guitar line and a downright boom-bap beat as the track morphs into an alluring cinematic watercolor. On “Not Again,” Kessler’s spikey, ringing guitar sound beguiles as the track builds from ethereal atmospherics to a fascinating tension, all swathed in rippling reverb. “All the Marbles” combines booming tom-toms and aquatic guitar to create the kind of ineffable audio alchemy that lies at the heart of It’s Later Than You Think. And listen closely throughout the album: several tracks layer in a subtle sonic scrim: the breeze blowing through trees, the room tone in Kessler’s apartment, Christmas tree lights clinking together in the wind, short wave radio recordings.

Kessler literally road-tested the album’s sequence during a visit to Mexico City, walking around the city streets with the music in his earbuds. Maybe that’s how he got the song title “En Camino” — Spanish for “on the way” — perfect for a project that’s in the zone between two places, where anything can happen. Even the album title occurred to him while he was out walking: “It’s a reminder about many things in life,” he says. “It’s always later than you think.”

Two special remixes close It’s Later Than You Think in a sort of double reprise. Kessler’s old friend TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and his musical partner Wilder Zoby did a radical reworking of “All the Marbles,” extracting a brief bit and creating a whole new piece of music out of it, with Adebimpe declaiming brief phrases — even though it’s the only track with vocals, it still prompts “movies in your mind.” The Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti is another old friend, and he and his brother Leo did a plaintive, hypnotic remix of “No Sharing in Tech House.” “They put a lot of energy and heart into it, and you can really feel it,” says Kessler.

Neither ambient music nor foreground music, Big Noble is its own special beast, possible only because of a longtime friendship, a shared vision, and great artistic trust. It’s the product of two gifted musicians with similar roots who went in different directions and then met up in the same unique sonic place. “There’s a feeling in music that Daniel and I connect on,” Fraioli says. “It’s hard to to put into words but that’s why we make music: to express that.” That connection is why It’s Later Than You Think works so beautifully. “For me, making music is as personal as it gets,” adds Kessler, “and when it’s going well, when you’re hitting all the green lights, it’s the most euphoric feeling in the world.”