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MEMOIRS OF AN AESTHETE Aug 2015

memoirsofanaesthete@gmail.com
or – ashtraynavigations@hotmail.com

Well, who’d-a-thought it, Ashtray Navigations and the rest of the Yorkshire crew on the cover of The Wire this month, and a nice big feature inside by Alex Neilson and Frances Morgan. To celebrate (transl – “hopefully cash in”), we are having a big clearout/warehouse retrieval round-up. See below for info on new stuff, old stuff and things that have not been available for many years, plus some things at a specially reduced our-faces-on-the-cover-of-a-mag prices (hey, aren’t the prices meant to go UP??)

But first….

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – A SHIMMERING REPLICA
LP and CD set released by VHF Records
£17 plus postage

New album just released. LP and CD set with 100 minutes total playing time. Please note that we are already nearly out of stock of copies of this, but another shipment of copies are on the way so there may be a slight delay with your order.

“This first-ever VHF release by the 21-years-running Ashtray Navigations brings one more core piece of the UK freakout underground back to the mothership. With a discography that boggles even the most ardent Discogs user and an on-point WTF graphic sensibility, Ash Nav fits perfectly into the extremely fertile and prolific scene that has produced titans like Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra.

On this generous 100-minute package, Phil Todd and Melanie O’Dubshlaine essay a kind of guitarand- electronics exotica with burbling rhythms, Heldonlike laser guitar leads, field recordings, synth racket, etc. The totally fun take on Les Baxter’s all-time classic “Quiet Village” (here wittily retitled “Quite Village”) is a good example of the explorer spirit at work. Considering the amount of unhinged psychedelic fuzzwah lead damage laid out across this thing, it’s arguably the most effusive guitar heroics record of the genre, hopefully inspiring a new generation of young rockers out there to get on the bus.”

MELANIE O’DUBHSHLAINE – DEFORMED VOWELS
LP released by Club Papers/Golden Lab
£15 plus postage

“Proper weirdo music, none of yr boomkat crap” – Neil Campbell

“Melanie O’Dubhshlaine is a Leeds-based synthetic noise merchant (formerly performing under the Ocelocelot moniker). An obtuse musical fantasist, M O’D is a purveyor of heavy space-chord amalgamations, drum pad improv, and the human voice synthesized into abstraction and stripped of communicative utilitarianism. Always great live, this supporting pillar of the Ashtray Navigations empire stands independent, peaceful like a heron, as the brown river unremittingly carries pillagers’ debris downstream to some godforsaken industrial necropolis, long ago taken hostage by Japanese knotweed.”

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other Yorkshire/Ashtray-related treats we are flogging. There are very low quantities remaining of some of these so best to send an email to reserve copies first – thanks! Note some reduced prices and some warehouse rediscoveries of things not offered for sale in a while

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – THE BEAK STUCK OUT OF THE SNOW
CD in digipak cover…limited to 200 copies
£7 plus postage

Ashtray recordings from icy Yorkshire, December 2009-January 2010. More in the vein of last year’s much-loved “Johnny Fuckoff Minotaur” disque than anything, with the famous exploding fuzzball drum machine, glacial mellotron/synth duelling and firecracker guitar runs. Also, the vintage 1960s “Top Gear” fuzz pedal which appeared on only the very earliest Ashtray Navigations recordings has been fixed so you can hear it snarl once more. A more reflective, melodic Ashtray Navigations than you usually get with this one, with a distinct winter feel which should hold out until at least July. Hopefully we’ll have sold them all by then. Hope you like it.

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – DIRT MUMMIES AND BLOODY AMPS AND BLOOD MUMMIES AND DIRTY AMPS
CD in digipak cover…limited to 200 copies
£7 plus postage

Digital re-inscription of the “Dirt Mummies and Bloody Amps” LP which appeared on Freenoise back in 2006, plus the “Blood Mummies and Dirty Amps” tape on Goldsoundz which showed up a couple of years later, both long sold-out. They always belonged together in mutual bliss, so here they are. First CD on the Memoirs sub-label Revival Records.

“sub-aquatic synth bubble, busted-up cassette-tape hiss and distorted electric guitar hover that sounds like a mythical god banished from the realm of light and trying desperately to clamber his/her way out of a dark bottomless void where time itself stands still.” -James Blackshaw, Foxy Digitalis

“Todd’s mastery of everything even remotely in tune with psychedelia is here in its spangled, sprawlin’ glory though he never shoots even so much as a backwards glance – Ashtray Navigations are pushing on into the 41st century and bucking “revivalism” so hard I got saddle sores” – Outer Space Gamelan

“Ashtray Navigations remain the best interstellar rock band in that genre’s never-ending dystopia.”- Scott McKeating, Rock-A-Rolla

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – CAEDUCEUS AND BLACK SAL

pink vinyl LP….limited to 250 copies
£7 plus postage

The latest in Ashtray Navigations’ ongoing vinylization of our out-of-print CDR catalogue has this amped-up mindbender from 2007… yes, the one with the cute little doggies on the cover. Except now they’re on the label and the vinyl is pink. And there is no cover, just a PVC bag so it matches the Red Culture reissue.
One side featuring a thick dinner of swirling tambouras, electric sitars and synths blasting out of tiny battery amp speakers wrapped in buzzing tinfoil (a description of the methodology here and not just the sound!). One side of clubfooted samba rhythms and twin guitar sustain overload which offers a key as to why Ashtray Navigations’ set at Thurston’s ATP a few years ago was roundly condemned as “Santana” in certain circles. Ashtray at its heaviest and most monolithic, though those words are often apply, I guess.

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – RED CULTURE
red vinyl LP…limited to 250 copies
£7 plus postage

A few copies left of this stormin’ trio session – be quick.

Tape Muck Box Set label

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – EARLY YEARS/TAPE MUCK 1994-1997
10xCD-R box set…limited to 50 copies VERY FEW LEFT
£30 plus postage

second edition of this long sold out early years excavation, this time packaged in more prosaic white card boxes rather than film cans (so the buyers of the first edition can retain their superiority complexes) – limited to only 50 copies so be quick.

includes the following early cassette releases – A SEISMOGRAPHIC RESEQUENCING OF THE HUMAN BRAIN PARTICLES, DRAIN’D, BEAUTY MYTH, A SPIKE THROUGH THE HEART OF JELLY, BICYCLE GLUE BLUES, THE TRIAL OF DOCTOR SPOCK, DESTALINISATION CASSETTE, EASTER-EXIT, PLEASE STOP BREATHING, NIGHTMARISH VISIONS GLIMPSED BEHIND SEALED EYELIDS, BLEACHED BONES – MOVING COIL, THE MESSAGE IS PURE, LAST SONG OF THE DEAD WOLF, PLASTIC, QUARTZ, FAUVIST (DISTASTE)…all remastered but thankfully not de-hissed! 12 HOURS PLUS OF SIZZLING FUN!

” the earliest things were done in the perfect environment of nowheresville, not Tokyo, NYC or even Leeds but a small industrial town in the middle of England, for an audience of pretty much myself – you could forget about gigs or a release on a local label unless you played “normal” punk/metal or covers or what have you. I had very few instruments, mostly junk, and a rotting four track bought off the legendary Al Monger for about thirty quid I think. There was nobody else I knew back then doing this sort of thing. I had never done this kind of thing before. There were a lot of bongos and ukeleles put through analogue echo boxes. Later a stylophone and an antique moog. The guitar eventually fell apart and I never had an amp. Someone taped me some early power electronics things and some home-made folk/psych records and they sounded like the kind of things I could do with the gear and “technique” in my possession back then. Since then all of those things have been reissued on CD or on Mutant Sounds now, but sometimes I prefer the sound of the nth generation cassette copies I had back then. Early Ashtray Navigations always sounded like the nth generation cassette copies I had back then. There was a burgeoning cassette underground back then in the mid-90s but I don’t know if too many people were paying attention other than us. Nearly everything here precedes the first Betley 7 inch and the Siltbreeze LP and it was a strange joy to hear it hiss once more…”

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – CLOUD COME CADAVER

CD-R ltd. 100 copies

£5 plus postage

Found a few more copies of this 2013 CD-R. One of the Wire’s pics in their guide to Ashtray in the recent issue. Lovely screenprint on foil sleeve printed by Sir Michael Flower.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – KNURR & SPELL : BEING PSYCHEDELIC SOUNDS FROM YORKSHIRE
CD limited to 200 copies
£7 plus postage

Four-act compilation CD co-released with Smokers Gifts records and Greece’s wonderous Absurd/Noise Below label. Psychedelia, noise and drone from 21st Century Yorkshire, England. Twenty minutes of splendid sounds each from the following solo projects:
MORAL HOLIDAY Phil Todd (Ashtray Navigations, Inca  Eyeball, Truant, Target Shoppers etc) with a floor full of antiquated analogue junk and a microphone at the secret traffic island between power electronics and electro-pop
FOLDHEAD intense synth and fuzz walls from Paul Foldhead, ex-Smell & Quim and frequent Astral Social Club collaborator, also occaisionally sighted in the unbelieable duo Early Hominids.
SHEMBOID long-running and criminally under-exposed project which has been blowing a few selective minds in the Leeds area for the last decade or so. Wild guitar and intricate sequencer patterns.
OCELOCELOT solo sounds by Melanie O’Dubhslaine of Ashtray Navigations, Sculptress etc. Frazzled oscillations and alien transmissions from the busted up radio which lives inside your head.

Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides + Human Combustion Engine = HUMAN HORSES
Digipak CD limited to 250 copies
£7 plus postage

First collaboration between PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES and HUMAN COMBUSTION ENGINE, recorded live before a select audience in Manchester, England. You know, that famous place.
An exquisite interlacing of acoustic and electronic tones with spaces for high flying solo excursions. This is the first meeting of an ongoing collaboration project.

PART WILD HORSES MANE are Pascal Nichols (percussion) and Kelly Jayne Jones (flute, electronics and piano). They have many acclaimed albums of splendid duo improv calligraphy on a variety of labels worldwide.

“a master class in holding tension through its flute and percussion-led aural experiments, a sense of the medieval in the pair’s jazz-informed explorations.” – Drowned in Sound

“Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides occupy the same liminal zone between free jazz and abstract sound as Flaherty/Corsano. The duo of drummer Pascal Nichols and flautist Kelly Jones play a form of improvised music that refernces many totemic fire music sources – John Coltrane’s LSD-inspired masterpiece Om, the classic Don Cherry/ Ed Blackwell Mu sessions or, more specifically, Cherry’s soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain – while subverting them with a punk primitive attack that owes as much to Leeds’s drone pioneers Vibracathedral Orchestra as it does to the Fluxus-inspired ritual of Japan’s Taj Mahal Travellers” – The Wire magazine

HUMAN COMBUSTION ENGINE are Melanie O’Dubhslaine (evolver synth) and Phil Todd (moog synth). They are probably best known for their involvement in the long running ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS project. Human Combustion Engine is their analogue synthdrift improv duo.

“The battle of synthetic other worldly noises had the audience captured and the lack of visual stimulus was irrelevant. The noises that resulted from their knob twizzling made me visualise alien birds landing around the room perching on the window sills calling out to each other before taking off flying around our heads.” – Manchester Mule

XENIS EMPUTAE TRAVELLING BAND – THE PYROGNOMIC GLASS
vinyl limited to 250 copies
£8 plus postage

The Xenis Emputae Travelling Band is Mr. Phil Legard of the hallowe’ed borough of Yorkshire, England. He has been hard at work since 2001 making psychedelic folk-concrete inspired by the psychogeography and mythology of various secret regions of the British countryside. XETB has released plenty of CDRs and tapes over the years (all limited editions, long sold out etc etc) but, aside from one track on a Cold Spring Records CD, nothing at all in a “posh” format – something we at Memoirs thought we should do something about. We are, after all, classy folks and that.
Mr. Legard is also a writer on various occult and esoteric matters, his most recent publication being a contribution to the new translation of “The Consecrated Little Book Of Black Venus” (Waning Moon Publications). He also has several other music projects, most notably The Neon Death Slittes and Pneumonic Consort. He is also, for his many sins, a frequent collaborator in Ashtray Navigations.

THE PISS SUPERSTITION – A THEME PARK FOR WHATEVER HAPPENED BEFORE
vinyl LP…limited to 250 copies
£8 plus postage

The suave Mr.Bradley is of course best known for being a founder member of The Vibracathedral Orchestra. If you’ve never heard of them, well, I don’t believe you, but in case its true, you may remember him from Birmingham’s finest amplifier drone crew The Negative Kite, or his early duo work with Neil Campbell.  Or for a series of very limited solo releases, mostly cassettes and mostly ultra limited editions, either under his own name or as A Companion As Glamorous As Sleeping On Wheels. When last sighted on stage he was  blazing through “Human Cannonball” in the rockband version of Birds Of Delay.

This LP is the first Julian Bradley sighting for a number of years, and the first vinyl since a ltd.100 LP on Giardia sometime in the mid-90s.
“A Theme Park For Whatever Happened Before” features eight tracks of intricate electronic caligraphy produced by archaic and malfunctioning effects units, unsweetened by digital reverb or any other modern day fripperies. Fuzztone and feedback patterns pulsating and intersecting to create a unique sound which mixes drone electronics, garage psych and a lumbering dose of doom metal.

It doesn’t sound quite like anything else ever, but if you can imagine The Dead C eviscerating the instrumental bits off the first Roxy Music album you’re halfway there.  Mr.Bradley is not a ten-CDR-a-month man, to put it mildly, so don’t miss out on this rare vinyl appearance, which has a full pro-printed colour cover (truly a Memoirs first).

CZECH NYMPHS – 2 : Electronic Music Composition 1st November 2006
vinyl LP limited to 200 copies
£5 plus postage

Rediscovered some copies of this oddball solo Phil Todd project’s sole vinyl release. These will come in very minimal handmade covers. Intense electronic spasms for the four-way escalator in your mind. Something like that. I think its beautiful.

HALF AN ABORTION – DROWSY SEEPAGE
CD-R limited to 75 copies
£4 plus postage

Continuing Memoirs’ recent “look at Leeds”, here’s the 2nd CD-R by Yorkshire’s most youthful psychedelic noise “face”, Mr. Pete Cann, an occaisional Ashtray Navigations collaborator and proprietor of the Crater Lake music and entertainment empire. Yes, its an ear-piercing racket, and his project monicker tells us in no uncertain terms that we are not yet in the realms of High Art. But this has to be the most planned out and elegantly structured harsh trip I’ve heard for some time. A veritable ballet of oscillators, mic’d up junk and psychedelic filtrations and convulsions. Lovely screenprint blue and white sleeve by Mr.Flower, with a recent portrait of the artist at labour on the back

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couple of things on other labels that we still have copies left of…

Insect Descent, 2009

ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – INSECT DESCENT

CD-R released by Obsolete Units

£5 plus postage

“Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations has endured in numerous multifarious formations since the mid-90’s, operating as both a solo and group enterprise that has recorded for an extensive list of crucial experimental labels (Siltbreeze, Chocolate Monk, and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon to name a few, as well as Todd’s own Memoirs Of An Aesthete) while having conquered all approaches to subterranean psychedelia: gargantuan deep-drones, endless minimalism, pastoral improvisations. A long-unreleased full-length recorded circa 2008, Insect Descent sees Todd generating his music in isolation, yet the sonics suggest some of Ash Nav’s most densely constructed and meticulously overlapped torrents of noise, a tumult that recalls Matthew Bower’s various guitar-and-electronics masterworks as well as the piercingly gorgeous instrumental chants of Vibracathedral Orchestra and the meditative mantras of LaMonte Young. From the bombastic feedback symphony of “One Millions Pleasurecards All Painted White” to the tranquilizing serenity of “Fake Aeroplanes,” these five works intertwine into a seamless fusion of cathartic eruption and trance-inducing edification. One of Todd’s most immediate and paramount recordings by far. Pro-pressed/pro-printed CDR housed in a pro-printed digipack. Edition of 100.”

 

HUMAN COMBUSTION ENGINE – VI : GAMES WITHOUT

CD-R released by Ilse

£5 plus postage

“Games Without is the sixth volume in the continuing saga of Human Combustion Engine, Mel and Phil’s krautrock/prog synth incarnation.  The package is entirely standard: pro-copied CD-r in jewel case with colour insert.  The content is one 45 minute track constructed from subtle tweaking and restrained knob twiddling.  The effect is to induce a maximal reverie just as involving as any of the preceding episodes.” – Radio Free Midwich

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB/MIDWICH/DANIEL THOMAS/ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS – VICTORIAN ELECTRONICS

4 X 3″ CD-R box set released by Striate Cortex

£15 plus postage

Found only TWO more copies of this world-beating box set from a few years ago. A disc by each of the above commemorating their then-weekly public house meetings. Very very beautiful package.

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we have retrieved a bunch of old BETLEY WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS releases from a warehouse somewhere on Venus. Vintage nineties splendour, now available from the source! Some copies will be slightly tarnished from storage (the sleeves slightly creased, media inside will be as new). Early shoppers will get better copies.

GREEN MONKEY – A RUBY IN THE SAND IS LIKE CHOCOLATE IN THE WATER
lime green vinyl 7″
£2.50 plus postage

First EP by this short lived hard rock improv power trio. Phil Todd (Ashtray Navigations) on guitar and moog synth. Joincey (Inca Eyeball, Silver Dick etc) on six/sick string bass, Doog (Spy Versus Spy etc) on drum kit. Intense and flowing. Three tracks of hard but not quite aimless jamming. A beaut.

GREEN MONKEY – THE LOTUS FLOWER WILL NO LONGER BLOSSOM ON YOUR ISLAND
CD
£4 plus postage

And a full album by the above. Hard rock trio improv but with a sense of direction and the occasional melody. Still possibly the loudest CD ever mastered.

THE NEW PECULIARS – A MORE WITHERING CRITIQUE THAN HARRY PUSSY
vinyl 7″
£2.50 plus postage

Primitive punk improv delight from this superb IDEA FIRE COMPANY side project. David, Gloria and Karla Borecky plus Scott Foust jam it up good and strong. Includes a great cover of The Prats “Bored”. Cover art by Graham Lambkin.

MONOSTADT 3
CD
£6 plus postage

A few copies left of this great CD by Adris Hoyos (just-ex HARRY PUSSY), Robert Price and Priya Ray
“Rated #1 by a multitude of madmen. This sonic mesh of feedback and self indulgence has reached more livingrooms and car stereos then ever expected and caused quite an forgetable stir in the noise community (for the record Robert did the cover art and Graham Lambkin did the sexy insert)”

TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A. – TONAL HARMONY
CDEP
£5 plus postage

Very few copies left…All star supergroup incarnation of Tom Smith’s unique 90s unit. The usual Smith/Rat Bastard/Ben Wolcott trio joined by Simeon Cox (SILVER APPLES), John Morton (ELECTRIC EELS) and Bill Orcutt.

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and also still available on Memoirs…

WEYES BLUHD – SHATTERED MIRROR b/w LIQUOR CASTLE
vinyl 7″..limited to 300 copies – last few available
£4 plus postage

The first 7″ vinyl release by Weyes Bluhd aka Weyes Blood aka Natalie Mering.
Playing all the instruments (including some contraptions of her own design), Weyes Bluhd conjures up two classics of eldritch pop on this fine biscuit. With a superbly home-made analogue feel (the master was sent on a cassette! yes, in this day and age), Natalie’s skewed ballads drenched in feedback may remind us old folks of the Xpressway “sound” from way back.  Vocally it’s remniscent of great 60s doomy chantueses such as Nico and Grace Slick.  Her 2011 LP on Not Not Fun, has further shown her to be a powerful new personality on the Underground scene.

NACKT INSECTEN – A SITE SPECIFIC PIECE OF AVANT-GARDE SOUND ART, NOTHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT / CORRIDOR VOYAGER (QUANTUM ODYSSEY II)
vinyl 7″ & CD…limited to 200 copies
£8 plus postage

Mr. Ruaradidh Sanachen has been getting a name for himself recently with his one man kosmische metal space ritual project Nackt Insecten, releasing plenty of limited edition “stuff” on a whole bunch of labels. In February 2008, as part of Glasgow’s wonderful Instal festival, he was seen cradling a suitcase full of howling drone/noise aboard Glasgow’s tube trains, and what a show it was
As Nackt Insecten’s relentless sounds meshed in perfectly with the locomotive rumblings, I thought to myself what a fine 7 inch single it would make. And sure enough, over a year later, here it is. An explanation made by a member of the “audience” to a worried fellow traveller provides the title.

This package also contains a CD of new Nackt Insecten studio concoctions, a conceptual sequel to the recent LP on Blackest Rainbow Records. A real CD too, not a CDR! Cover art by Goldenlab’s Fliss Horrocks and the inclusion of a genuine Glasgow tube train ticket completes this handsome package.

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You’ll find quite a few of these items available in digital and physical form on the Ashtray Navigations and Memoirs Of An Aesthete bandcamp pages, plus some digital-only items
https://ashtraynavigations.bandcamp.com

http://memoirsofanaesthete.bandcamp.com

However, if you are ordering physical copies, it’ll be cheaper to do it via this list.

postage rates

POSTAGE RATES:
We ship all orders by Royal Mail.

CD/7″/cassette/magazine:
1st item: UK: £1.50, Europe: £4, rest of world: £5
each after: UK: 75p, Europe: 50p, rest of world: £1

12″ LP and 10″s:
1st item: UK: £3.00, Europe: £7.00, rest of world: £9.00
each after: UK: £1.50, Europe: £1.50, rest of world: £2.00

FOR OVERSEAS ORDERS OVER £40 IN VALUE we recommend choosing Airsure tracked shipping for an extra £4.90 on top of basic postage price. This insures your item against loss or damage up to £500.

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