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Massive discount on a curated selection of items from the Students of Decay catalogue until stocks last!

New Arrivals

Cold Blue
Back by popular demand (and available for the first time as a CD), this essential collection of West Coast new music—an anthology known simply as Cold Blue—is a classic. Originally issued on vinyl in 1984, shortly before the demise of the old Cold Blue label, the disc quickly became the company’s most popular release. When Cold Blue was started up again in 2000, the company received numerous letters encouraging it to re-release the anthology as a CD.Although bound together by a common concern wi…
Dancing On Water
All the music on this album, with the exception of Song(s) of the Sirens, was written specifically for remarkable clarinetist/bass clarinetist Marty Walker. As Is Thought/Aurora, a casually dramatic work for bass clarinet, harp, and vibraphone, is like a miniature concerto in its structure, contrasting solo bass clarinet phrases with tutti lines.Song(s) of the Sirens, a lush work for clarinet, piano, and woman’s voice, gradually and systematically builds in texture, harmonic richness, and melodi…
I Hear It In The Rain
Five Pieces for Piano (1997), Two Preludes for Piano (1996-97), and For Celesta (1985)—the latter for an instrument that is very seldom featured in a solo setting—display Michael Jon Fink’s command of crystalline forms that are Debussyian in beauty (and occasionally in gesture) yet hold a distinctly contemporary artistic distance from their musical materials. These fragile and primarily extremely quiet pieces are performed with great aplomb by Bryan Pezzone.Living to be Hunted by the Moon (1987)…
Nikkowolverine
Nikko Wolverine (1999) is a three-movement piece scored for various bowed and struck metal instruments in non-tempered tunings. These instruments, which were designed and built by the composer, emit tones that are rich in complex harmonics and often sound more electronic than acoustic. All three movements of this work share motivic materials, but each successive movement adds more harmonic complexity and textural density to the movement that preceded it.Tons Tons Macoutes (1999) is a texturally …
Last Things
Last Things, for bass clarinet, pedal steel guitar, piano, and electronic keyboards, was written for clarinetist Marty Walker in 1987, and has been subsequently performed (as a piece for bass clarinet and tape) by Walker at concerts across the U.S. Somewhat a rhapsodic call and response between bass clarinet and pedal steel guitar, it is constructed of seven connected sections (or songs) that over the length of the piece slowly build in intensity. As the piece progresses, each section expands in…
I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
Points Sans Surface
Points sans surface is a composition by Jean-Luc Guionnet for the Un Ensemble, a large ensemble created in 2012 under the direction of David Chiesa. The piece includes a sound system for 25 musicians and 8 speakers. It is also a visual experience generated by light. The general device consists of an acoustic and electroacoustic spatialization of sound. The audience is surrounded by musicians and speakers. Each instrumentalist is picked up by a microphone connected to a mixing console offering th…
De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
In his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) the Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE) explores Epicurean physics and philosophy through richly poetic language and metaphors, as he presents an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism, Lucretius tries to explain the nature of the mind and soul, and the development of the world. While some of his ideas have been proven scientifically wrong, some of his thoughts seem strikingly reasonable even for the cont…
Arantzazu Close & Far
Nearly 15 years after the edition “Maison.House II-V” – in duet with his electroacoustic friend Eric La Casa – Vert Pituite La Belle is pleased to collaborate once again with Jean-Luc Guionnet, this time alone and at the organ.For Arantzazu Close & Far, the vinyl medium makes perfect sense: two sides, two versions of the same sound event, the recording of the same improvisation on the organ of the basilica of the monastery of Arantzazu in the Spanish Basque country, realized during a residency o…
Artists on Hanne Darboven
Artists on Hanne Darboven is the first installment in a series culled from Dia Art Foundation’s Artists on Artists lectures, focused on German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven. Established in 2001, the lecture series highlights the work of modern and contemporary artists from the perspective of their colleagues and peers. The inaugural Artists on Artists title is published in conjunction with the opening of Darboven’s 1980–83 installation Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1…
Black Trees
Recorded in Paris in 2014. Ame Son was a progressive rock band from France. They are notable for being featured on the Nurse With Wound list. Members of Ame Son also were in the band Red Noise and Komintern. Formed by Marc Blanc and Patrick Fontaine. Both were members of the first line-up of Banana Moon (the band that later would become Gong). Their debut album Catalyse was released by BYG in 1970. Ame Son is Marc Blanc, François Garrel, Romeo Blanc, and Bernard Lavialle. Edition of 500.
The Saga Of Padani
The Oakland Elementary School Arkestra presents the odyssey of 4th, 5th & 6th grade students from novice musicians into an avant garde ensemble. An ensemble that engenders an array of sonic textures which never remain static or stagnant, but flow in a way that it's always surprising, often startling and astonishing.These schoolkids have traveled the spaceways of Modernism, Minimalism, Impressionism, Exotica, film soundtracks and more. They have ingested the lessons of Iconic artists like Sun Ra …
Carpet Proof Of Daily Reports
Hand-numbered edition of 300. It’s a Swedish house thing. Börft boss Jan Zwarre Svensson a.k.a Frak returns to his early project, Villa Åbo, for six deep and rude acid rub downs. Named after the former bank he grew up in and later founded Studio Styrka, site of early Frak and Alvars Orkester recordings, Villa Åbo is a funky study in teenaged fascinations and nostalgia for dance music’s golden era. Reprising the vibes of his 1997 releases, ’Ticketiketas’ and ‘Tagetes’, Villa Åbo pays tribute to c…
Shared Meanings
individually stamped edition of 400 copies. This sampler 12” includes Mumdance & Logos’ massive ‘Teachers’ alongside zingers from Nkisi,Peder Mannerfelt, Caterina Barbieri and Space Afrika. On a dance tip, Mumdance & Logos pay tribute to a Chicago convention on ‘Teachers’, listing a roll-call of influential UK artists, DJs, labels and clubs in a style most famously deployed by Daft Punk, while Nkisi comes fiercely correct with the swingeing Congolese techno rolige of ‘Kinega’, and Peder Ma…
Night Kaledoscope
Alec Cheer's Night Kaleidescope is an incredible modern techno-based score to an underground psychedelic detective vampire indie drama. So there. There is little history here as this is a new release, but this is simply an amazing modern score to a 2017 film one may never have heard about (directed by Grant McPhee). What sets this score apart is its clinical post-modern feel, with influences including Mica, John Carpenter, Brian Eno, Goblin, Fabio Frizzi, even whispers of the 1980s, as well as a…
The South of the East
The South of the East is the debut album from Tenggara Trio, comprising of improvisors from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Like previous Lao Ban Records releases it has Yong Yandsen gargling, screeching, skronking and more on the tenor saxophone, but unlike previous releases, "The South of the East" is the most rocking (read: loud, aggressive, driving) release from Lao Ban Records hitherto. The other two members, Ikbal S. Lubys and Dharma both play electric guitar (with efx and objects), but…
Chamber Electronic Music
Sub Rosa presents Gilles Gobert's Electronic Chamber Music. Musical genre: trans, hybrid, crossbred, mongrel, whoreson, mixed, unclean, intricated, blended, interracial, bastard, harmonized, bouillabaisse, pandemonium, disorder, bewilderment, muddled, disarrayed, tangled, distraction, shambled, discorded, abashed, fuzzy, foggy, plaything, rejoicing, orgasmic, thoughtlessness, salad, undisciplined, inordinate, coded, slanged, talk, privacy, nearness, disobedient, unruly, confidante, imperfect, ta…
Silo 001
The label offers to the artists involved in the project the possibility to gather and experiment a unique sound setting. Inside a large concrete silo, the sound endlessly twirl sand spins around. A narrow door made of cast iron gives access to this cylindrical space where everything is surrounded by a red glowing darkness.The sound experience is intro-spective and utterly physical.These moments of residenciesunfold as timeless wanderings within the circovonlutions of this vibratile space …
Guts Magnet Sea
Chik White is the moniker of Darcy Spidle, jaw harpist, tape collagist, non-institutional locally-sourced field recordist, and founder of the OBEY Convention festival. Spidle was part of the Canadian crust-punk scene in his younger years, but he eventually evolved towards more adventurous sides of music. In 2009, after obtaining a collection of jaw harps, his musical output took its most dramatic turn. Since then, he has released a string of tapes and records on seminal underground labels…
Double B
Following up on his remarkable Triangular Trade, sound artist (and operator of the Every Contact Leaves a Trace imprint) Seth Cooke offers with Double B another richly investigated, purposeful work looking into the sonic artifacts of the unresolved dissonances in constellations of history, politics, and media. Through his no-input field recording technique, Cooke brings into consideration the materiality of the inscription devices, a sort of sonic ghost hunting that rewards investigative listeni…