Students of Decay

Snapshots of an abandoned city. Fragments of song drifting out of basements and across alleyways, muffled conversations. Scrutinized, the “music” disappears – maybe paracusia? Brass Orchids, Anne Guthrie’s second full-length album for Students of Decay, is an entrancing collage of new and old sounds drawn from a variety of beguiling sources. Posthumous contributions from the artist’s grandfather, a jazz pianist; obsolete media palimpsests (some vanity, some necessity); tap dancing on a peeling floor… An unsettling and strangely beautiful album – akin to something on the tip of your tongue, which, before you can name it, slips away into forgetting. Includes download code. Edition of 300.

Preorder ships on or before 03/23/2018
Forced Exposure

New label tee features a bucolic landscape by Melissa Rae Lieb on the front and the SOD logo on the back for good measure. Printed on high quality Bella+ Canvas natural tees. Limited to fifty pieces, sizes XS-XL. Sold out of M and XL. Specify size preference in payment note.

Available
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Billy Gomberg is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist whose past work has been published on labels such as and/OAR, Digitalis and Sunshine Ltd. In addition to his solo output, he operates in a variety of collaborative settings (including Fraufraulein, a duo with fellow label alum Anne Guthrie) and, over the course of the last five years, has carved out a niche for himself at the crossroads of electro-acoustic improvisation, ambient, and minimalist music. Slight at that Contact is a beguiling album that brings to mind both the bucolic electronica of Microstoria and the expansive arrangements of Mirages-era Tim Hecker. “Medial” opens the record with a sea of vaporous, blooming tones set against an array of delicately percussive clicks and cuts. “Acute” further develops this motif, conjuring a cinematic atmosphere that recalls perhaps a train station in some ruined, futuristic metropolis. Over the course of eight understated but nuanced compositions, Gomberg cultivates an intoxicating aural topography, a deep, expressive collection that offers considerable rewards to the attentive listener.

PREORDER - ships on or before 10/7/16
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All My Circles Run is the fourth full length release by Montreal-based electro-acoustic composer Sarah Davachi and her second outing for Students of Decay. In a move which may surprise followers of her previous output, the five compositions on this record eschew synthesizer entirely, each focusing on a different instrument, including strings, voice, organ and piano. What remains consistent however is the striking attention to detail and commitment to investigating tonal possibility that characterizes all of her work. The sinewy “For Strings” opens the album, with keening overtones stretching out in all directions to form a mass of slow moving, radiant sound. “For Voice” charts an even more celestial course, as wordless vocals ebb and flow to awe-inspiring effect. The stunning, melancholic “For Piano” closes the record and is something of a high watermark in Davachi’s oeuvre to date, with plaintive piano figures nestled atop a shimmering string drone to create a richly emotive, reverent atmosphere. Ultimately, All My Circles Run is a confident step forward from an exciting artist whose compositional and aesthetic tendencies steer her steadfastly towards both the subjunctive and the sublime.

PREORDER
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“City of Brides” is the third full-length album by En, the Bay Area-based duo of multi-instrumentalists Maxwell August Croy and James Devane. It was recorded over the last few years in a variety of contexts and follows upon 2012’s well-received “Already Gone,” further developing the diverse sonic palette of that record. Across four sides, the pair present exotic, transportive, and richly detailed pieces that toe the line between ecstatic longform ambience and elegant, structured electronic composition. As always with En’s output, the koto is a focal point, its distinctive tone ringing out amidst the hazy guitar, vocal, and synthesis environments that surround it. The material on the record ranges from moody to celestial, from cool to white hot. Pieces such as “Blonde is Back” and “Mendocino Nature Rave” merge sizzling modular synth lacework with plaintive, familiar drone clouds to rapturous ends, while the two-part “Songs For Diminished Lovemaking” sequence charts a more minimal and nostalgic course. With “City of Brides,” we’re pleased to present En’s most realized and defining statement to date, a welcome addition to the ever-expanding and fertile topography of American West Coast drone music. Artwork by Justin Almquist.

2LP now available
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The trajectory of Alex Cobb’s music over the course of the last decade could be viewed as a distillation of tone and atmosphere to arrive at “Chantepleure,” his most optimistic and sanguine musical statement to date. The album, however, was created at a time of heartache, isolation and emotional upheaval and acts as a balm of tender tones where abstract guitar lines circle and suspend in a kind of refined elegance. Noise, once a hallmark of Cobb’s music, has not been entirely removed, but manifests here in a different form. A delicate dissonance shades the edges of the these four tracks, providing textural color and gorgeously offsetting the lush nature of the music. Even in short spans, this approach yields substantial results. At three and a half minutes, “Disporting with a Shadow” pulls back the curtain just enough to let flecks of natural guitar notes and traces of alluring melody seep into the mix. The album closes with the side-long “Path of Appearance,” a cathartic composition that is best described as a poem of overtones which, like the rest of the album, is sourced from electric guitar and minimal effects but feels more akin to the sun stretching to fill all corners of a darkened room. A testament to sonic refinement, a way of coping, an exciting step forward for an established artist—the minimalist “Chantepleure” is all of these things.

LP ships on or before 07/15/15
US $19ppdCAN $26ppdWORLD $33ppd

“Barons Court” is the debut full length album by Canadian electroacoustic composer Sarah Davachi, following short run releases on Important Records’ Cassauna imprint and Full Spectrum. Trained at Mills College, Davachi’s work marries an academic approach to synthesis and live instrumentation with a preternatural attunement to timbre, pacing, and atmosphere. While the record employs a number of vintage and legendary synthesizers, including Buchla’s 200 and Music Easel, an EMS Synthi, and Sequential Circuit’s Prophet 5, Davachi’s approach to her craft here is much more in line with the longform textural minimalism of Eliane Radigue than it is with the hyper-dense modular pyrotechnics of the majority of her synthesist contemporaries. Three of the album’s five compositions feature acoustic instrumentation (cello, flue, harmonium, oboe, and viola, played by Davachi and others) which is situated alongside a battery of keyboards and synths and emphasizes the composerly aspect of her work. “heliotrope” slowly billows into being with a low, keeling drone that is gradually married to an assortment of sympathetic, aurally complex sounds to yield a rich fantasia of beat frequencies and overtones. Later, “wood green” opens almost inaudibly, with lovely eddies of subtly modulating synth clouds evolving effortlessly into something much larger, as comforting and familiar as it is expansive. In an era in which the synthesizer inarguably dominates the topography of experimental music, Davachi’s work stands alone - distinctive, patient, and beautiful.

LP ships 2/17/15
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A specially priced double-CD issue of Secret Pyramid’s two albums, “The Silent March” and “Movements of Night.” Originally released in 2011 on cassette by the Canadian micro-imprint Nice-Up International, The Silent March can be viewed as something of a mission statement for Amir Abbey’s skyriding Secret Pyramid project. Critics have compared his sound to the more blasted entries in the Popul Vuh catalog and to Flying Saucer Attack’s cherished fuzz devotionals, and indeed Abbey’s reverb-drenched songforms and titanic edifices of drone do feel at times as though they’ve been cut from the same cloth. Abbey weaves themes of birth, death, nostalgia and existential dread into an album as cohesive as it is all-consuming, a spell that seeks to simultaneously welcome and protect against darkness in its many forms. 2013’s “Movements of Night” finds Abbey further develop and refine the haunting, faraway sound-world that earned the aforementioned release well-due praise. Deftly navigating the properties of sleep and unconsciousness, Abbey charts a course that is equal parts harrowing and funereal, tranquil and sublime. Juxtaposing the everyday with the obscured, the half-there melodies and arcs of hazy guitar histrionics dissolve into a more familiar, tangible atmosphere in which radiant drones are tethered to a driving bassline. With “Movements of Night,” Abbey casts his net into the abyss of the unconscious and returns with a potent paean to the dreamworld.

2CD ships on 11/11/14.
US $16ppdCAN $21ppdWORLD $25ppd

Originally released in 2011 on cassette by the Canadian micro imprint Nice-Up International, “The Silent March” is the precursor to 2013’s “Movements of Night” and can be seen as something of a mission statement for Amir Abbey’s skyriding Secret Pyramid project. Critics have compared the Secret Pyramid sound to the more blasted entries in the Popul Vuh catalog and to Flying Saucer Attack’s cherished fuzz devotionals, and indeed Abbey’s reverb-drenched songforms and titanic edifices of drone do feel at times as though they’ve been cut from the same cloth. Opener “Outside” might be best understood as the soundtrack to slow-motion video footage of a first-person plunge over some impossibly grand waterfall on an endless loop, as tumbling overtones fight for air amongst turbid plumes of distortion. “Still Return” finds acoustic guitar figures struggling to escape a blinding mist, their resolution finally arriving in the form of the sublime tranquility of the titular track which follows. Abbey masterfully weaves themes of birth, death, nostalgia, and existential dread into an album which is as cohesive as it is all-consuming, a spell which seeks to simultaneously welcome and protect against darkness in its many forms. This edition of “The Silent March” features an improved mixdown by Abbey and a remaster by James Plotkin to insure maximum transport.

LP ships 11/11/14. The first 100 preorders will receive a complimentary copy of Secret Pyramid’s forthcoming “Into the Black” live cassette.
US $19ppdCAN $26ppdWORLD $33ppd

Marble Sky was the moniker under which chameleonic nomad Jeff Witscher, best known for his work as Rene Hell, recorded his most intimate and contemplative music. The material that comprises this eponymous 2LP was originally released as short-run cassettes in the late aughts, highly coveted and personal releases that imparted mystery and a strange sense of hermetic romanticism. Although Witscher’s musical sensibilities are remarkably diverse, what remains consistent in all of his projects is an idiosyncratic knack for composition and a boundless capacity for ingenuity. Indeed, his work has inspired as many imitators as it has ardent completists. “Pulling up Grass Under a Blanket” opens the set and is a prime example of Marble Sky’s brand of profoundly affecting outsider ambient. Fragile, bucolic tones hover like dust motes in the morning sun, subtended by tape hiss that threatens, but never quite manages, to consume them. “Lea; Crossed Eyes” gazes similarly skyward, slowly building to an awe-inspiring, monolithic drone. Viewed from the present, these recordings can be seen as the distillation of an important and uniquely tender movement in American experimental music, documented largely by West Coast tape labels such as Ekhein, Monorail Trespassing, and Witscher’s own now-defunct Callow God. Remastered by James Plotkin and presented for the first time on vinyl, this is the definitive collection of work by one of Jeff Witscher’s most justifiably beloved guises. This deluxe 2LP edition features photography by Helen Scarsdale and gatefold tip-on jackets.

$28.98 + shipping. Ships on or before 10.28.14.
US $30ppdCAN $43ppdWORLD $53ppd

Based in Montreal, Kyle Bobby Dunn has been producing elegant and refined works of ambient minimalism for the better part of a decade. His two lengthy and critically lauded collections for the Low Point label, “A Young Person’s Guide…” and “Bring Me the Head of…,” established him as a force to be reckoned with in the current epoch of drone/ambient music. Indeed, he is a rare artist whose compositions offer listeners wonder, sadness and pathos in equal measure, and are executed with a precision and effortlessness that eludes most musicians working in the genre. With “Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness,” he has produced what is undoubtedly his most focused and emotionally charged work thus far, a rich, expansive collection of slowly unfurling beauty that stretches out over the course of more than two hours. Dunn’s trademark guitar swells and slow-moving loops are present here, but feel clearer and with a renewed sense of purpose and poise. He recorded source material for the album in various Canadian towns, including Belleville and Dorset, and processed and arranged the recordings at L’auberge de Dunn Studios in Montreal while, in his own words, “reflecting heavily on the gorgeous feet of a certain French woman and binging on strong beers and cheese.” From the opening salvo, “Ouverture de Peter Hodge Transport,” Dunn establishes a haunting, lovelorn trajectory that is developed through pieces such as the strikingly beautiful “Boring Foothills of Foot Fetishville” and the poignant closer “And the Day is Dunn and I Can Only Think of You,” titles which exhibit well his trademark sense of (black) humor. A powerful statement and what is at once the artist’s most complex, complete and accessible album to date, we’re pleased and honored to present “Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness.”

3LP/2CD/Digital now available
Standard Edition 3LP: $38 + shipping
US $43ppdCAN $55ppdWORLD $64ppd
2CD Edition: $12.50 + shipping
US $16ppdCAN $21ppdWORLD $25ppd

Composed and recorded in Los Angeles and San Francisco, “I” is the debut full-length album by Maxwell August Croy and Sean McCann. Croy is best known for his work in Bay Area duo EN, wherein he processes koto, voice, and other instrumentation into ecstatic and nuanced drone-based recordings. McCann is a solo artist whose work continues to undergo seismic evolutions, manifested most recently on the justly lauded “Music for Private Ensemble,” an album of autodidactic modern composition that defies easy categorization. Working as a duo, Croy and McCann have successfully synthesized compositional and aesthetic tropes from their respective discographies in order to produce something extraordinary. “Parting Light (Suite)” opens the album with a flurry of koto, cello, and violin lines masterfully woven together; a complex movement that dissembles to reveal a more spacious environment in which each gesture takes on a heightened significance. Croy’s koto lends the piece an Eastern aura that is complicated by McCann’s playing which is equal parts idiosyncratic and grandiose. Elsewhere, “Alexandria” finds the duo operating at their most celestial, working their instruments into a harrowing, beautiful dirge comprised of clarion tones and wide-eyed string arrangements. Ultimately, the sensibility cultivated by Croy and McCann on “I” proves to be utterly unique, perhaps situated best somewhere among the soundworlds of Gavin Bryars, Taj Mahal Travellers and Richard Skelton. The LP was mastered by Rashad Becker and the jacket features exclusive monotypes by Andrew Chalk. 

LP available:
US $19ppdCAN $26ppdWORLD $33ppd

Recorded in northern California in 1984 and released in a micro edition by the Creative Sound imprint in January of the following year, “Journey to the Light” is a true lost gem of private issue New Age music, an album that is more spoken about than heard and deserves to be recognized alongside established classics of the genre. For too long it has languished out of print and been nearly impossible to come by, occasionally popping up in private auctions only to be snatched up by savvy collectors. Performed with processed electric guitar, zither, voice, and field recordings, it is unabashedly beautiful music- two sidelong pieces that feel as though they may have always existed, hanging in the air like a morning fog over the Pacific. For as archetypal to the genre as Banning’s compositions might appear to be, it would be remiss not to comment on their singular nature, on what sets them apart from those works to which one would be inclined to compare them. Indeed, Banning’s music has a seriousness and intensity that was absent from much of the New Age scene as it existed in the early ‘80s. The album’s first piece, “Everlasting Moments,” charts a course somewhere between the weblike guitar cycles of Manuel Gottsching and the buoyant minimalism of Terry Riley. “A Sea of Glass” constructs itself similarly but navigates even calmer waters, providing the listener with a sensuous tapestry of ever-evolving guitar drones and radiant zither filigree. These heady, oddly prescient recordings were uncovered by New Age historian/figurehead Douglas Mcgowan (Yoga Records) and will appeal as much to fans of drone and ambient music as to those enamored with labyrinthine annals of American private press records, New Age as such, or with the recent renaissance of synthesizer-based experimental music. Remastered for presence and clarity by James Plotkin, we’re proud to offer up the definitive edition of Mark Banning’s transportive masterwork.

LP available:
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Performed and put to tape at Estuary Recording Facility, “The Seeker and The Healer” constitutes the first collaborative work by Texas-based sound artist Cory Allen and minimalist composer Duane Pitre, who hails from Louisiana. The album’s two sidelong pieces were developed out of multiple improvisational sessions governed by predetermined rules, sourced from piano, bowed guitar, harmonium, and 49-stringed drone harp (a custom-made instrument of Allen’s own design featured here on record for the first time). In the context of both musicians’ discographies, these pieces occupy a unique and important place, synthesizing the strengths and compositional tendencies of each into a sympathetic and symbiotic whole. Pitre’s powerful, overtone-laden string work, documented on sterling outings for labels such as Important and Root Strata, is on fine display here, augmented by the keen sense of pacing and attention to the finer points of acoustic atmosphere that typify Allen’s solo output. Both pieces go beyond academic minimalism, mining deeper and more personal terrain. The arc of “The Seeker” begins with contemplative piano clusters that are wed to guitar and harmonium drones, building to a dramatic crescendo and punctuated by percussive histrionics sourced from Allen’s drone harp. “The Healer” conjures a focused, mournful environment imbued with rich sonic lyricism by way of Pitre’s bowed guitar. Operating as a duo, Allen and Pitre have found truly fertile ground, producing an album that stands as a radiant beacon in their already exemplary catalogs- a masterful record that proves to be distinct from their past releases and simply cannot be missed.

LP available
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Based in Brooklyn, Anne Guthrie is a professional acoustician, composer and sound artist whose work combines a highly technical knowledge of natural reverb, field recording, and extended microphone techniques with live and processed instrumentation, including French horn, violoncello and contrabass. Guthrie’s is a music concerned with the play of dichotomies - cacophony/beauty, accidental/intentional, unhinged/refined, traditional/outsider. “Codiaeum variegatum” is her debut full-length proper, following out-of-print short run releases on labels such as Engraved Glass and Copy For Your Records, as well as the recently released and critically lauded “Sinter,” a collaboration with Richard Kamerman issued by way of Erstwhile Records sublabel ErstAEU. The album’s six compositions showcase Guthrie’s acumen as a composer of rich and diverse sonic phenomena. From the keeling strings which open “Branching Low and Spreading,” she guides the listener through dense yet highly structured thickets of sound, juxtaposing astute room/field recordings with classical instrumentation, both dry and processed. On “Unlike More Slender and Graceful,” filtered French horn plumes are wed to cavernous, watery field recordings to forge beautiful yet bleak vistas, motifs to be revisited in a more hopeful light later on. Ultimately, Guthrie’s work occupies a heady middle ground somewhere between the enchantment of the everyday manifested by artists such as Graham Lambkin and Vanessa Rossetto and the high-minded electroacoustic investigations of her fellow Erstwhile alumni. Strictly limited to 250 copies.

LP available:
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Secret Pyramid is the solo project of Vancouver-based musician Amir Abbey, whose previous output includes “The Silent March,” a cassette-only release that we’ll be reissuing on vinyl in early 2014. “Movements of Night” finds Abbey refining and developing the haunting, faraway soundworld that earned the aforementioned cassette well-due praise. “A Descent” opens the record, and its title aptly portends the dirge-like drones and throbbing cycles of low-end that are offered up to the listener. Throughout the album, Abbey masterfully navigates the properties of sleep and unconsciousness, charting a course that is equal parts harrowing and funereal, tranquil and sublime. Abbey proves particularly adept at juxtaposing the everyday with the obscured, and this is evidenced perfectly on “Closer,” with half-there melodies and arcs of hazy guitar histrionics that seamlessly dissolve into “To Forget,” a track that posits a more familiar, tangible atmosphere in which radiant drones are tethered to a driving bassline, recalling perhaps a lost 70’s Popol Vuh Herzog soundtrack. “Escape” closes the album on a nostalgic note, akin to the feeling one is confronted with when waking from a wondrous dream which he knows he cannot revisit. With “Movements of Night,” Abbey casts his net into the abyss of the unconscious and returns with a potent paean to the dreamworld.

LP available:
US $19ppdCAN $26ppdWORLD $33ppd

Comprised of Joseph Raglani (Kranky) and Mike Pollard (Arbor), Bryter Layter is a collaborative unit that focuses on the lyrical faculties of analog synthesis. For the most part, these recordings find the pair eschewing the at-times unfocused, long-form drone techniques that have become fixtures in the scene in favor of short, melodic compositions that are strikingly rich in detail. Listeners familiar with the oeuvres of Raglani and Pollard will find much to love here. As the pillow-soft, analog tone-clouds that characterize the latter’s work as Pale Blue Sky find themselves wed to the highly structured, dynamic arrangements that one associates with the former’s solo output.“Two Lenses” is rich and cinematic, rife with evocative motifs which ebb and flow from one piece to the next creating, over the course of the album, a masterfully composed, unified whole.
“Your Verdant Skin,” the opening salvo, brings to mind Popul Vuh’s work for Werner Herzog at its most grandiose, as waves of rising, symphonic tones surge and dissolve, carrying us along with them. “First Light,” with its startlingly catchy syncopated rhythms, illustrates perfectly those qualities which set Bryter Layter apart from their synthesist contemporaries, with Raglani and Pollard channeling wistful, sun-washed pop sensibilities into the cold facades of their machines. Recorded live and meticulously arranged by Raglani at his home studio, and mastered by Greg Davis to supreme effect, “Two Lenses” builds upon and extends the qualities established on the pair’s 2009 cassette release “Imprinted Season” in every way. Their work here runs the gamut from maudlin and picturesque to profoundly hopeful always with an eye towards the beautiful.

12" LP Available: Experimedia, ANOST