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Thomas Ankersmit, “The Dip” (Students of Decay, 2025)

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This latest opus from Berlin’s Thomas Ankersmit continues his work with the Serge Modular synthesizer, which is just fine by me, as his last two Serge albums were pure headphone nirvana. Notably, both of those albums were homages of a sort (to Dick Raaijmakers and Maryanne Amacher), but The Dip is simply Thomas Ankersmit being Thomas Ankersmit, which is a significantly different vision. Naturally, many of the familiar sounds of the Serge are back, but the focus has shifted away from spatial movements a bit and more towards “introspective, atmospheric, and even melodic elements.” The result is still an immersive and deeply evocative sound world, but it is a bit less alien this time around and even features a lengthy passage of absolutely sublime beauty.

The album is composed of two pieces, each of which fills an entire side of the vinyl release. The first piece, “17:54,” opens with a deep bass rumble that slowly fades in with an accompaniment of various chirps, beeps, whines, and short-wave radio interference sounds. That is not particularly compelling or unique modular synth territory at first, but as everything starts coming together, it sounds like some kind of Morse code message of beeps is coming in right before the short-wave radio becomes possessed by more demonic sounds and a dense miasma of feedback, crackle, and insectoid chattering. Then things start to get quite a bit more interesting, as the sounds suddenly become less spasmodic and the piece unexpectedly opens up into an eerie interlude of feedback-like drones.

A series of deep explosions in the distance soon follows, as does a series of sounds that resemble downed power lines shooting sprays of sparks onto deserted streets. Throughout it all, the eerie drones organically and beautifully oscillate and pulse like a sentient alien cloud, which provides a suitably haunting backdrop for what sounds like every nearby transformer slowly exploding in a rain of sparks as distorted, unintelligible voices gibber like an urgent warning message that never reached its mark. Then a train roars by overhead and the final moments are just the hiss of a soft rainstorm, the rumble of distant thunder, and lonely gusts of wind blowing down empty streets. 

The second piece (“18:51”) is a similarly stellar slow-burner. It opens in similarly modest fashion with some oscillating bass drones, short-wave radio squall, eruptions of static, and a rhythmic hiss motif that could be either a distant train or a rainstorm. After a series of blurting convulsions, however, the piece opens up into a meditative passage of dreamlike, slow-motion melody that resembles a solemn organ mass drifting through fitful squalls of short-wave radio interference. Gradually, however, the organ sounds start erratically bending and pitch-shifting and the electronic chaos is replaced by the calming sounds of cricket- or cicada-like chatter and hum before a series distorted and haunted sounds rhythmically rumble through the landscape like earthquake aftershocks as fireworks explode overhead. 

Then things start to get considerably weirder, as a melodic element that sounds like a stuttering, manic, and out-of-control ‘80s video game theme appears, which Ankersmit slowly expands into a truly majestic crescendo of poignant, harmonically rich chords that steadily intensify into something that feels smoldering, immense, and elemental. That proves to be a false ending, however, as a heavy blackened drone eventually envelops everything like a goddamn eclipse to leave behind only a slow fadeout of soft chords in a ruined landscape of erratic beeps and insistently throbbing distortion.

Both pieces are absolute stunners, which is a doubly impressive feat given that I already loved Ankersmit’s Serge work and thought I knew what to expect. Apparently, Ankersmit has been working with the Serge for nearly two decades now, which explains quite a lot: there are plenty of cool artists dabbling in vintage/modular synthesizers these days, but there are not a hell of a lot of people around who have actually managed to master some of the more complex and challenging models. To my ears, it sure seems like Ankersmit is one of the rare exceptions, as the spells he weaves here feel like absolute sorcery to me. This may very well be my favorite album in Ankersmit’s entire discography.

Listen here.

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Angelo Harmsworth, “Singe” (Students of Decay, 2022)

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I was a bit later to the Angelo Harmsworth party than I would have liked, but the Berlin-based American composer has been fitfully releasing very distinctive blown-out “ambient” albums for about a decade now on an array of hip and discriminating small labels (Opal Tapes, Vaagner, enmossed, Psychic Liberation, etc.). Harmsworth’s latest is his first for Students of Decay and marks a rare vinyl outing, as most of his previous physical releases have been limited to cassette. According to the label, Singe “may be the high water mark” of Harmsworth’s career to date, which does feel like a completely plausible claim, but one that is very hard to confidently echo given how many killer Harmsworth pieces already exist. Even if Singe fails to conclusively eclipse all of Harmsworth’s past triumphs, however, it does seem to be one of his most consistently strong releases and an ideal starting point for the curious.

Notably, describing Harmsworth’s vision as “ambient” or even “power ambient” feels cruelly reductionist, which is probably why he amusingly titled a 2020 release Fully Automated Luxury Ambient. That imaginary subgenre feels much closer to the mark, as the intensity and textural inventiveness that Angelo brings to these compositions shares far more common ground with artists like Tim Hecker or Fennesz (or collapsing power lines during a live volcano) than it does with anyone trafficking in droning, meditative loops.

Those craving the aforementioned “collapsing power lines” vibe will have a mercifully short wait, as the opening “Igniting the Periphery” calls to mind buzzing high tension wires swayed by a deep seismic shudder as the surrounding buildings collapse in slow motion. There are some other elements as well, like fragments of twinkling piano and warm waves of frayed drones, but the viscerally heaving, buzzing, and gnarled wreckage at the heart of the piece is the showstopper—everything else is just there to color the mood. That balance holds true for the rest of the album as well, as the Singe experience feels akin to wandering through six cataclysmic yet weirdly beautiful natural disasters. For example, the crackling and hissing “Frothed” evokes slow jets of magma breaking through a buckling, blasted landscape, while “Drip Motion” has the feel of a storm slowly forming and then slowly dissipating.

In short, Harmsworth harnesses the proverbial “force of nature” and wields it beautifully. That said, “Drip Motion” is an album highlight for more conventionally musical reasons as well, as it resembles the burning and heaving wreckage of a killer Porter Ricks cut fading in and out of focus. “A Twofold Excess” then ends the album’s first half with yet another gem, as it feels like slowed-down footage of a tornado ripping apart a sawmill before dissolving into a sublime coda of sputtering static, tender piano, and warbling, whimpering streaks of psychedelia.

Somehow, the weather forecast only gets crazier for the album’s second half, though that is hardly surprising given that “Aporia” seems to not even be earthbound anymore, as Harmsworth conjures a buzzing and shuddering alien landscape of strangled static and quivering feedback. In addition to that, there are some elements that sound like field recordings of a welding crew on the Death Star along with a guest appearance by Felisha Ledesma. Sadly, Ledesma does not stick around very long (I’m a big fan of her Fringe album), but a human voice emerging from the howling industrial ruin was unexpected enough to leave an impression regardless.

Elsewhere, “Reversing the Procession” calls to mind flickering ghosts in the burning, buckling hull of a sinking shop and probably marks the album’s zenith as far as sheer churning physicality is concerned. The closing “Scope Neglect” may be the album’s zenith beauty-wise though, calling to mind slow-motion footage of a burning spacecraft breaking apart as it falls to earth. Hell, I’ll even throw in a dramatic sunset as a backdrop, as “Scope Neglect” is an absolutely gorgeous example of Harmsworth’s vision of elemental power and blackened beauty. And Singe is one hell of an album. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of another artist who could have made an album in this vein without lapsing into unlistenable bombast or erring too much into the “noise” or “ambient” side of the delicate balance. In Harmsworth’s hands, however, Singe feels like a series of vivid field recordings taken from the end of the world.

Listen here.

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Sarah Davachi, “All My Circles Run” (Students of Decay, 2016)

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Following hot on the heels of this year’s synth-centric Dominions, Sarah Davachi returns to Students of Decay for a bit of an unexpected curveball: an album with no synthesizer at all. Employing an organ, some strings, a piano, and her own voice, Davachi mostly reprises the minimal, drone-centered aesthetic of her previous work (she is quite fond of sustained notes and slow-building harmonies), but also impressively expands her niche with a few more conventionally melodic pieces. As a result, the elegant and understated All My Circles Run is likely the most diverse of Davachi’s albums to date, sustaining a slow-burning and subtly shifting reverie for forty sublime minutes.

The album opens in characteristically Davachi-esque fashion, as a simple, gently undulating violin drone unfolds for over a minute before any overt transformation begins to creep in. In fact, “For Strings” may very well capture Davachi at her most minimalistic, as the entire piece is essentially just a hazy, slow-motion massing of notes into a lush chord (or at least a more harmonically rich drone). There is a bit of a minor surprise at the end, however, as all of the strings gradually disappear to leave behind an unexpected wake of quietly throbbing and stuttering noise. It is quite a clever bit of compositional sleight of hand: using an ostensibly straightforward drone piece to secretly weave a complex undercurrent of uncomfortably oscillating harmonies, then pulling back the veil to reveal it. I enjoy surprises and neat tricks. 

I was actually quite a bit more taken with the following “For Voice” though (matter-of-fact song titles abound here). Using only her own voice and a sustained and wobbly thrum, Davachi casts a haunting and evocative spell as the various soft-focus layers of wordless, angelic voices intertwine to form eerie minor key harmonies. Unlike many Davachi pieces, “Voices” appears in a fully formed state and stays that way for nearly ten minutes of dreamlike, otherworldly beauty, as there is no need to blossom into anything more. 

“Chanter,” which follows, is yet another divergence from the expected, albeit a somewhat less heavenly one. While a “chanter” is part of a bagpipe, the piece sounds very much like it was played on a submerged piano. Much like “For Strings,” it is yet another piece where a very simple theme undergoes a very subtle and slow-motion transformation. In this case, the repeating two-chord theme is gradually muddied by the addition of other notes, which gradually darkens the harmonic waters to increasingly hallucinatory and disquieting effect.

“For Organ” returns to a bit more familiar and established territory, as a sustained organ drone gently undulates in apparent stasis as other notes slowly and sneakily seep in to subtly shift its mood and coloration. Unexpectedly, however, Sarah begins playing actual, overt notes around the halfway point and the transformation is greatly accelerated into a lush, shimmering haze of gently pulsing harmonies. 

The album’s final piece, however, does not seem particularly indebted to Davachi’s previous work at all, as “For Piano” is essentially a simple, gentle, and melodic piano miniature that falls within shouting distance of artists like Harold Budd and Stars of the Lid. The sole “Davachi” touch is merely that the piano is competing for the foreground with a very prominent and visceral string drone that provides a sharp counterbalance to the pieces more pastoral aspects. 

It is not my favorite piece on the album by any means, but it works quite well nonetheless, as Sarah has found a way to expand outwards into more serene territory without quite losing her bite. Also, I was caught very much off-guard when the piano part actually changed into something new and became fairly loose and improvisatory, a tactic that seems almost radical in the context of Davachi’s history of patient, glacially unfolding accretion.

In a way, “For Piano” might actually be the most significant piece on the entire album, as even the similarly divergent “For Voice” sticks quite close to Davachi’s comfort zone of skillfully crafted, slow-moving threads that twist together to yield vibrant textures and rich harmonies. That aesthetic obviously works quite well, but it is necessarily a somewhat constrained one that is hard to explore for long without everything starting to sound over-familiar. 

While several of the other pieces are much more to my liking (particularly “For Voice”), it is “For Piano” that shakes up Sarah’s aesthetic the most by incorporating loose and evolving melodies and drifting quite far from the original motif. It will certainly be interesting to see where Davachi evolves from here, but all bets are off for now, as she is about to release her third album of 2016 on Important and there is no clear arc that I can unravel with such a condensed chronology. In any case, All My Circles Run is yet another fine album from Davachi, using deceptive simplicity as a foundation for sneakily escalating complexity and vivid harmonic depth. I do not think that it necessarily surpasses Barons Court, but it is very much on a similar level.

Listen here.

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Sarah Davachi, “Barons Court” (Students of Decay, 2015)

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Sarah Davachi is a young Vancouver-based artist who shares that passion for old analog synthesizers that is so rampant these days. Stylistically, however, she is an old-style composer that shares much more common ground with minimalist drone royalty like Éliane Radigue and Phill Niblock than she does with the current pack of squiggling, blurting, and entropy-minded synth revivalists. Also, she seems to have a fine intuitive grasp on the limits of such gear and ingeniously employs strings, flutes, and a harmonium to elevate her pieces into something better and more distinctly her own. More importantly, this is exactly the sort of drone that I love and Davachi manages to do it better than just about anybody. This is already a lock for one of my favorite albums of 2015. 

I never expected to turn into someone who has strong opinions and passions regarding minimal drone, but it seems as though I somehow wound up that way despite my best efforts. While there are plenty drone albums that I enjoy, there are only a handful that absolutely delight me. Barons Court happily falls into that rare latter category, though it is difficult to articulate quite why, as extremely minimal music succeeds or fails almost entirely in its execution. Literally anyone can let a single note gently oscillate for ten minutes, but it takes a particular strain of genius (as well as superhuman patience and near-surgical attention to detail) to transform that into something mesmerizing. For most of Barons Court, Davachi does just that.

Notably, Davachi is not quite as “pure” or aggressively minimal as some of her kindred spirits: while these pieces are certainly built upon the expected bed of quavering analog synthesizer, she often allows her drones to gradually cohere into a lush, warm, and languorously undulating chord. In fact, that is essentially all that happens in the 8-minute “Wood Green” and it is wonderful. In the other pieces, however, she twists that formula in a variety of compelling ways. 

“Tiergarten,” for example, follows roughly a similar trajectory, but darkens the waters with subtly dissonant harmonies and uneasy oscillations. The opening “Heliotrope,” on the other hand, is dissonant right out of the gate with a churning, uncomfortable swirl of bowed cello harmonies. Then, around the halfway point, Davachi transforms that subtle menace into deeply uneasy and unearthly beauty with the addition of some very ghostly flutes that recall Natural Snow Buildings at their best. The album’s centerpiece, the 13-minute “Guildford,” achieves a similarly haunting majesty, replacing those demonic flutes with spectral, floating synth swells and hypnotic harmonium drones. Then gradually, the darkness ebbs away a bit to make way for a more enigmatic mood of timeless, ritualistic-sounding beauty. It is an absolutely stellar piece, as is “Heliotrope.”

The final piece, “Ruislip,” is arguably something of a wobble that stands in the way of my proclaiming Barons Court to be an absolutely perfect album. However, if it is a misstep, it is admittedly a very subjective one: in most respects, it is a lot like everything great that preceded it, but the timbre of the synthesizer just has that annoying, artificial “’70s science documentary” edge to it that I cannot stand. 

Eventually that edge becomes dulled enough to enjoy though, as the piece gradually coheres into a masterfully warped and hallucinatory crescendo. I guess I remain somewhat on the fence about that one, though I will note that I vastly prefer the dubious gamble of “Ruislip” to the edgeless, blissed-out drone soup that most artists churn out these days. As far as everything else is concerned, however, Barons Court is an absolute monster of a debut: Davachi is a strong composer, an excellent stylist, and a remarkably assured and inventive new artist. I love this.

Listen here.

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Natural Snow Buildings/Isengrind/Twinsistermoon, “The Snowbringer Cult” (Students of Decay/Ba Da Bing, 2008)

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Ba Da Bing are clearly not ones to shy away from massive undertakings, following last year’s 4LP Night Coercion into the Company of Witches reissue with yet another quadruple LP. 2008’s The Snowbringer Cult was a monumental album for Natural Snow Buildings at the time of its release, as it was their first effort that was not available only as a hyper-limited cassette or CDr. As such, it was many people’s first exposure to the duo and Mehdi and Solange definitely set out to make it count, packing it with just about every single possible facet of their sound. That “kitchen sink” approach does not make for the most listenable whole, but Snowbringer is not lacking in sustained stretches of absolute, otherworldly brilliance.

The original version of The Snowbringer Cult was released as a double CD by Students of Decay, a format that remains in place for this reissue. The first disc contains a solo album by each member of the band, while the second disc is a lengthy collaborative effort. Aside from the addition of a vinyl format, the reissue remains completely faithful to the original album in every way. That was a wise decision, as only a lunatic would add bonus tracks to a 2+ hour album and the original art is thematically integral to the overall package (and also difficult to improve upon). Also, remastering or “cleaning up” such a beautifully and uniquely produced album would be criminal. The only truly significant change is that all three albums are now available as stand-alone releases, which makes them much easier to absorb. That was a truly great idea.

The Isengrind album (Solange Gularte’s solo project) is the shortest of the three, clocking in at just over half an hour. Despite that comparative brevity, it contains many of the set’s highlights, as Gularte was in the midst of a particularly fruitful creative period at the time. With few exceptions, the mood is a very shadowy and ritualistic one, leaning very heavily on droning Indian stringed instruments, choruses of ghostly chanting, clattering percussive flourishes, and eerily discordant flutes and pipes. 

On the best pieces, such as “To Ride With Hölle” and “Wooden False Face,” Solange manages to sound so anachronistic and alien that it is actually far easier to imagine that this is an ancient field recording of a long-forgotten cult in the midst of a human sacrifice than the solo project of a contemporary French woman. In fact, the latter often seems impossible. The mesmerizing spell is disrupted only once, as the somewhat ill-advised “Cat’s Cradle” dragged me reluctantly back to the present by drifting too closely to contemporary Freak Folk territory. Happily, that song can easily be deleted from an iTunes library to leave a near-perfect album, but vinyl owners will just have to try to get used to it.

The Twinsistermoon half of the disc unsurprisingly shares a lot of common ground with Solange’s effort, offering up still more occult-sounding drones, dissonant woodwinds, and tribal percussion. There are some significant differences, however. For one, Mehdi Ameziane’s drone pieces are more dense and grinding than Solange’s. More significantly, those heavier pieces are interspersed with a number of melancholy and sweetly child-like acoustic ballads. Another key difference is that the illusion of timelessness is not quite as effectively maintained as it is with the Isengrind portion, though that is mostly by design. 

On songs like “Order of the Dreamt,” Ameziane balances his more traditional instrumentation with roiling distortion and spacey flanging to create his own surreal headspace. I am also quite fond of “Spells,” which artfully combines Mehdi’s talents for both ritualistic “funeral procession” percussion and cascading acoustic arpeggios. The rest of the album is not quite on the same level, however, alternating between Mehdi’s simple, eerie campfire songs and some lo-fi metallic drones. Those remaining pieces are not exactly weak, but they are easily eclipsed by both Twinsistermoon’s own post-Snowbringer work and the rest of this album (which is excellent).

I was very happy to learn that Ba Da Bing were making the Natural Snow Buildings’ portion of The Snowbringer Cult available on its own, as it unquestionably one of the duo’s finest albums and needs to be heard by itself (and with fresh ears) to be fully appreciated. However, its original inclusion as the final disc of a three-way split release with the duo’s solo projects was kind of an inspired idea, as it beautifully illustrated how the duo united was so much greater than the sum of its parts. That is not necessarily true now, as both solo projects have evolved greatly in recent years, but Mehdi and Solange’s collaborations still felt like a stunning and magical transformation back in 2008. While I definitely like the Isengrind and Twinsistermoon segments of this collection, the Natural Snow Buildings portion of The Snowbringer Cult is an absolutely revelatory and dreamlike tour de force from start to finish.

Actually, “dreamlike” might be a bit misleading, as the opening “Resurrect Dead on Planet Six” (a cryptic Toynbee Tiles reference?) is much closer to a nightmare, building from queasily dissonant drones and flickering echoes into a roaring, visceral crescendo of guitar noise. Structurally, it closely resembles some of Mehdi’s solo work, but its execution is so complexly multilayered and seamlessly organic in its flow that it rises to a completely different level. That trend basically holds for the entirety of the album: expected ideas are alchemically turned into otherworldly brilliance through ingenious layering and deft transitions (and it all sounds both massive and gloriously anachronistic).

With very few exceptions, almost all of these ten songs are highlights, a fact that is even more remarkable given the uncharacteristically varied stylistic territory covered. “Inuk’s Song,” for example, is a gently rippling and hallucinatory reverie, while “Nieve Sacra” resembles a spacey, psych-damaged Morricone and “They Do Not Come Knocking There Any More” approximates a full-on tribal war march. The more abstract title piece, on the other hand, basically resembles nothing else that earthbound mortals have recorded outside of Natural Snow Buildings: my best approximation would probably be “an ancient voodoo ceremony is sucked through a black hole and eventually re-emerges mashed up with the doomed Children’s Crusade of 1212.” If there is a higher compliment for a piece of music, I certainly cannot think of it.

As was the case with Night Coercion Into the Company of Witches, The Snowbringer Cult is an absolutely exhausting and overwhelming listen in its entirety, which is its primary flaw. There is way too much here to reasonably process and not all of it is great. The similarities end there though: Night Coercion was a time capsule from a formative, largely unheard era of Natural Snow Buildings’ career, while The Snowbringer Cult captures the duo at their absolute collaborative zenith. The other major difference is that the best part of The Snowbringer Cult is now available by itself, no longer diluted by the inclusion of two full other albums worth of songs…and it is absolutely, screamingly essential. The Isengrind/Twinsistermoon albums are perfectly fine, of course, but the Natural Snow Buildings’ third is a strong candidate for the best thing that anybody will release this year (reissue or otherwise). This is the kind of album that I would run into a fire to save.

Listen here.

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Area C, “Charmed Birds Against Sorcery” (Students of Decay, 2009)

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Area C’s newest release borrows its theme from a passage in Claudius Aelian’s On The Characteristics of Animals (written around 200 AD); specifically one that states that doves can protect themselves from wizard attacks by using bay-tree shoots for their nests. From the same book, I also learned that beavers often elude predators by chewing off their own testicles. I suppose I‘m digressing though. I should probably mention that this is an excellent album at some point. I will find another forum for my ramblings about our delightful and industrious mammalian friends.

Providence’s Eric Carlson has been performing as Area C since 2002, largely alone but sometimes with occasional collaborators like Joel Thibodeau of Death Vessel. His work has historically been made with an arsenal of guitar, farfisa, sampler, and a recorder, but he appears to have left the farfisa in the closet this time around. I found some pictures of him performing live and was surprised not to see a laptop sitting on-stage with him, as this album seems very meticulously composed and features a healthy amount of electronic glitchery. Regardless of Carlson’s enigmatic process, something undeniably remarkable has been emerging from his nest of pedals and wires lately:  this first album for tireless drone-purveyors Students of Decay shows a marked evolution from Area C’s earlier works, as Charmed Birds unveils a warmer, more rhythmic, and more distinctive aesthetic.

“Composition Journal” opens the album with a lazy looping  and shimmering drone that is intermittently disrupted by stabs of white noise. The rhythmic foundation of the track is a locked groove that approximates what Neu! might sound like after taking a near-fatal amount of downers, which suits the track beautifully: anything more intrusive would break the fragile, sleepy spell that the multiple layers of guitars have painstakingly woven.  As the track progresses, however, it is masterfully enhanced by some sublimely beautiful treated-guitar washes and given added emotional color by minor key low-end swells. Then, around the midway point, the rhythmic throb is removed to reveal a langourous and sensual bed of sparkling ambient bliss. That lovely idyll is quite pleasant while it lasts, but it is quickly enveloped by a swarm of electronic glitches which themselves ultimately dissolve into an outro of incandescent mournful swells.  

The rest of the album largely follows a similar (albeit sometimes less stunning) vein, albeit with a few exceptions like the sparser and darker “Of Set Purpose, No Arrangement.” Fortunately, I am more than happy with the aforementioned vein, as Carlson far exceeds similar artists in his feel for melody, dynamics, and arrangements. He also exhibits a purposeful deliberation that is all too rare in the underground improv scene. Bluntly speaking, drone music constructed from guitar loops has the potential to be meandering and spectacularly, infuriatingly dull. Carlson skillfully avoids that pitfall with an intuitive understanding of how long a particular theme can unfold before it becomes tiresome, as well as a real knack for graceful transitions.  He also grasps that even the most beautiful, warm, shimmering drone can start to seem syrupy and boring in large doses, so he has artfully expanded his tonal palette with harsher crackling and rhythmic throbs to counteract that effect.

There are several other striking tracks here as well, but I am most fond of “Sleeping Birds” (which is very effectively enhanced by a crackling cut-up field recording of deceased poet Robert Greeley) and the epic twenty-minute title track, which marries elegant slide guitar to a slow-motion crackling pulse and an endless melancholy backwards-sounding guitar loop. Regrettably, the English language does not contain a sufficient amount of synonyms for “shimmering,” “nuanced,” and “warm” for me to effectively describe the magic of this album, but I am certainly dazzled by the beauty of these soundscapes.  Carlson’s earlier albums have certainly been quite promising and likeable, but this is the work of a formidable artist hitting his stride (but presumably not his peak).  

Listen here.