Students Of Decay

Davachi, Sarah

All My Circles Run

Students Of Decay

All My Circles Run is the third 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 her striking attention to detail and a commitment to tonal possibilities that characterize all of her work. The sinewy “For Strings” opens the album, with keening overtones stretching out in all directions to form a massive, 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 a high watermark in Davachi’s oeuvre, with plaintive piano figures nestled atop a shimmering string drone to create a rich, reverent atmosphere. All My Circles Run is a step forward from an exciting artist whose compositional and aesthetic tendencies steer her steadfastly toward both the subjunctive and the sublime.

Gomberg, Billy

Slight At That Contact

Students Of Decay

Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Billy Gomberg’s past work has released by 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. The beguiling Slight at that Contact 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, conjuring the cinematic atmosphere of a train station in a 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.

En

City Of Brides

Students Of Decay

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 palette of that record. Across four sides, the pair presents exotic, transportive and richly detailed pieces that toe the line between ecstatic, long-form ambience and elegant, structured electronic composition.  As always, Croy’s koto is a focal point, its distinctive tone ringing out amidst the hazy guitar, vocal and synthesis environments that surround it. The material 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.  Students of Decay is 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.

Cobb, Alex

Chantepleure

Students Of Decay

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.

Davachi, Sarah

Barons Court

Students Of Decay

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 academic approach to synthesis and live instrumentation unites 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 Éliane 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.

Secret Pyramid

The Silent March

Students Of Decay

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 viewed 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 among 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 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.  This edition of The Silent March features an improved mix-down by Abbey and a remaster by James Plotkin to insure maximum transport.

Secret Pyramid

The Silent March / Movements Of Night

Students Of Decay

Students of Decay presents 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.

Marble Sky

S/t

Students Of Decay

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 2xLP was originally released in the late aughts as short-run cassettes—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 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 2xLP edition features photography by Helen Scarsdale and gatefold tip-on jackets.

Pitre, Duane And Cory Allen

The Seeker And The Healer

Students Of Decay

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 Louisiana minimalist composer Duane Pitre. The album’s two side-long 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, augmented by the keen sense of pacing and attention to the finer points of acoustic atmosphere that typify Allen’s solo output. Both tracks 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.

Dunn, Kyle Bobby

Kyle Bobby Dunn And The Infinite Sadness

Students Of Decay

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 to Kyle Bobby Dunn and Bring Me the Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn, established him as a force to be reckoned with in the current epoch of drone / ambient music. Indeed, his compositions offer listeners wonder, sadness and pathos in equal measure, and are executed with a precision and effortlessness that eludes many musicians working in the genre.  Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness 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 feel clearer and have 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 beer and cheese.”  From the opening salvo, “Ouverture de Peter Hodge Transport,” Dunn establishes a haunting, lovelorn trajectory that is developed through 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 that exhibit...

Croy, Maxwell August And Sean Mccann

I

Students Of Decay

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 synthesize compositional and aesthetic tropes from their respective discographies 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 complimented by McCann’s playing, 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, Croy and McCann cultivate an utterly unique sensibility on I, 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.

Guthrie, Anne

Codiaeum Variegatum

Students Of Decay

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. Her music explores the play of dichotomies: cacophony / beauty, accidental / intentional, unhinged / refined, traditional / outsider.  Codiaeum Variegatum is Guthrie’s 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 Erstwhile Records’ sub-label 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.

Banning, Mark

Journey To The Light

Students Of Decay

Recorded in Northern California in 1984 and released in a micro edition by the Creative Sound imprint in January of the following year, Mark Banning’s 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 nearly impossible to come by, occasionally popping up in private auctions only to be snatched up by savvy collectors. Incorporating processed electric guitar, zither, voice and field recordings, it is unabashedly beautiful music—two side-long pieces that feel as though they may have always existed, hanging in the air like a morning fog over the Pacific.  As archetypal to the genre as Banning’s compositions might appear to be, it would be remiss not to comment on their singular nature. 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...

Davis, John

Ask The Dust

Students Of Decay

Hailing from Northern California, John Davis is a sound artist, composer and filmmaker who has released music on labels such as Root Strata and Digitalis. With Ask the Dust, he offers up a moving suite of compositions employing a plethora of instrumentation: guitar, piano, tape loops, Max / MSP, field recordings and the newest addition to his arsenal, a complex assortment of Blacet synthesizer modules. Davis uses the synth not as the crux of his recordings but as a tool among many in his kit, weaving oscillations and mangled or rhythmic tones through pastoral webs of processed guitar and field recordings. To this end, the richness of his palette cannot be denied, nor can his prowess as a masterful arranger of abstract sound.  Opener “Superpartner” is a jittery array of pure sound that refuses to sit still, developing slowly and accruing detail and a sparring partner in the form of delicately treated acoustic guitar. Perhaps the record’s defining movement, “Synecdoche,” begins with a contemplative, almost romantic piano arrangement, sparse and beautiful—a moving miniature abruptly broken apart and replaced by a bed of layered sine waves and guitar haze that somehow matches the radiance of what preceded it. Striking in its attention to detail and compositional deftness, Ask the Dust is Davis’s most refined set of recordings to date, a deep album that rewards focused and repeated listening.

Secret Pyramid

Movements Of Night

Students Of Decay

Secret Pyramid is the solo project of Vancouver-based musician Amir Abbey, whose previous output includes The Silent March cassette (to be reissued on vinyl by Students of Decay in early 2014). Movements of Night finds Abbey further develop and refine the haunting, faraway sound-world that earned the aforementioned release well-due praise. “A Descent” opens the record; its title aptly portends the track’s dirge-like drones and throbbing cycles of low-end. Throughout Movements of Night, Abbey deftly navigates the properties of sleep and unconsciousness, charting 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 of “Closer” 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 ’70s Popol Vuh Herzog soundtrack. “Escape” closes the album on a nostalgic note, akin to the feeling of waking from a wondrous dream which one knows one 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.

Aquarelle

August Undone

Students Of Decay

From the very first seconds of “Within/Without,” listeners familiar with the output of Aquarelle, the nom-de-plume of Madison, Wisconsin-based sound artist Ryan Potts, will find themselves in territory that is at once familiar and new. This opening salvo explodes into being with the surging, analog fuzz blooms and preternatural sense of rhythm that endeared many to Sung in Broken Symmetry, his prior Students of Decay full-length, as well as his sterling contribution to the split LP with Alex Cobb issued via Low Point.  Nestled deep within these writhing guitar drones one hears plaintive piano notes and layered sine waves, an early hint of the notable development of the Aquarelle sound on August Undone. Potts’s compositions are strikingly rich in detail—indeed, a few of the mixes made use of all 64 tracks on his digital audio workstation—however, they never become muddy or unfocused, remaining instead truly effervescent, full of nuance and subtlety.  “This Is No Monument” recalls the halcyon days of C/Psi/P-era Birchville Cat Motel, with a massive wall of guitar distortion and distant chimes slowly dissolving into cascading chords and radiant, microtonal drones. “Clockless Hours,” the stunning closer, features a welcome appearance by cellist Brandon Wiarda and brings the album to a lovely and apt dénouement. In the end, August Undone is a brave step forward by a musician who is never content to rest upon his laurels.

Ekin Fil

S/t

Students Of Decay

Operating out of Istanbul, Ekin Fil is the solo project of Turkish musician Ekin Üzeltüzenci. Her music first came to the ears of many by way of Language, a 2011 cassette release on the Root Strata label that presented listeners with a fractured, hazy sound-world in which half-remembered melodies and wraith-like vocals cohered into dark and hypnotic masses.  On Ekin Fil, Üzeltüzenci opens the curtains a bit, letting in some light and offering up an even more refined work. This haunting collection of songs wouldn’t sound out of place on Drunken Fish Records in 1995, effectively channeling the ghosts of Roy Montgomery and the Bristol shoegaze scene, while occupying similar sonic climes to those traversed by Grouper and Jessica Bailiff.  “Anything Anywhere” opens the album and articulates its central concerns, with obscured, rhythmic guitar shapes coiling around Üzeltüzenci’s ethereal voice. Later, field recordings usher in the blackened night of “Two Stars,” one of the record’s most stark and exhilarating movements. Ultimately, Ekin Fil is a remarkably cohesive statement, an album of devotional pieces that function together to form a beautiful, faraway whole.