Live with Limpe Fuchs at Delius Art Centre, Bradford on May 20th!

Yes, Ashtray Navigations will be the mysterious “plus one more” at this amazing-looking event in Bradford next week. Hope we haven’t spoiled the surprise/shock for anyone. Seriously, this will be great.  INFO

Ashtray Navigations “Creep” 1995 cassette crawls out from oblivion.

Digital revival of a rare and creepy 1995 cassette, previously released on the mighty Minneapolis-based E.F.Tapes imprint (thanks Emil, if yer listening). Released almost exactly 22 years ago when analogue was affordable, the 21st century was science fiction and even politicians were nicer. OK, maybe not that, but you get the picture. One for the ears of those with a taste for our early clank and hum and hiss.

Digital available now, CDRs (ltd.50) will go out early next week. Stream and hopefully order via bandcamp

Or its £5 plus postage (£1 UK/£3 europe/£4.50 rest of world) and paypal usual ashtraynavigations(at)hotmail(dot)com.

New MORAL HOLIDAY album “Negative Anthropology”…first in six years!

Our garage-synth/power electrono-pop/analogue-distortion-and-howl-core/whatever (invent your own genre blah blah blah) side project returns! Four actual songs with actual lyrics recorded on actual cassette during the Easter break.

Digital available now, the CDRs (which should look very nice!) will be sent out early next week. Stream the whole lot now and distort your mind via bandcamp

Non-bandcamp people – its £5 plus postage (£1 UK/£3 europe/£4.50 rest of world) and paypal usual ashtraynavigations(at)hotmail(dot)com.

New 3″ CDr/digital MACHINE COOKIN

New MACHINE COOKIN extended play! first ASHTRAY of 2017! Also a 3″ CDR version limited to 50 copies, now available. Not done one of them in a while! COOKIN! Available on bandcamp, or of you don’t bandcamp, email us.

Also available again as digital downloads:

Chronique Du Nord

pubbores

Orange Proof Document (unreleased album from 10 years ago)

Some more digital revisitations of our past glories coming soon, so please keep watching!

 

Supporting HEXA at Howard Assembly Room this Friday

If you’re out in Leeds this weekend, we’re supporting  HEXA (Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Australian composer Lawrence English.) at Howard Assembly rooms on Friday 17th.  Hexa is “a sonic response to David Lynch’s The Factory Photographs.” It promises to be a pretty full-on industrial set, so if that’s your bag check it out. Tickets and more info here https://www.operanorth.co.uk/productions/hexa-david-lynch-s-the-factory-photographs

 

New LP here! TO MAKE A FOOL ASK AND YOU ARE THE FIRST on Blackest Ever Black

Copies of our new LP have just arrived! We haven’t had time to add it to the shop yet but get in touch if you want one. It’ll be £12 plus postage from us.

“Blackest Ever Black presents To Make A Fool Ask, And You Are The First, the latest – and, for us, greatest – full-length entry in Ashtray Navigations’ uniquely important, uniquely sprawling – possibly sentient and self-multiplying – discography.

It picks up where the nerve-damaged exotica of 2015’s A Shimmering Replica left off…acerbic “surf” guitar and synthetic salt-breeze fit for the Tropic of Yorkshire. Instant immersion in a potent, pungent psychedelia that feels equal parts cosmic and aquatic. What Todd wrenches out of his instrument these days is a language unto itself (perhaps it always was)… a helical, ecstatic, grieving howl…a (super)natural efflorescence, beyond earthly description or transcription…ur-rock and post-everything. But equal emphasis is given here to pulsating machine rhythms and lush keyboard textures, with killer contributions from longtime fellow traveller Mel O’Dubhshlaine.

There were pre-echoes of all this in the recent(ish) Fluctuants and Aero Infinite: but To Make A Fool feels like the culmination, or the fullest expression, of something which was only glimpsed in those earlier works. The side-long ‘Spray Two’ – gently eddying string-pads gradually slashed to all f***k with fraught piano improvisations – is a masterpiece in its own right. At its delirious peak, the whole thing boils over into brooding, arpeggiated noir-techno – Michael Mann’s steadicam roaming Leeds’ B-roads, some kind of tangerine nightmare – before finally cooling into a bleary starfield of pure and sumptuous hypno-tone. This LP is a trip, in the most skull-splitting, soul-crinkling sense of the word, but it soothes and heals as well. A circular and transformative journey to the other side of the underneath and a landmark recording from one of the most adept and visionary nodes in Britain’s freakout underground.”

Ashtray on the Beeb! Tomorrow!

We’ll be playing live on BBC Radio 3 tomorrow night, on Late Junction, if you’re up, tune in, or it’ll be on iplayer afterwards.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xhzyb

“Late Junction is let loose in Southbank Centre, London, for a late-night party as part of Radio 3’s 70th anniversary celebrations. Hosted by Nick Luscombe featuring live music and additional guests in front of an audience.

Midnight musical adventures are provided by Sarathy Korwar whose debut album has caused a stir for its elegant combination of jazz and electronics with the folk music of India’s Sidi community; and Yorkshire duo Ashtray Navigations freak out with psychedelic swoops, oscillating bleeps and noise guitar. Plus, broadcaster, DJ and ethnomusicologist Nabihah Iqbal shares new additions to her record collection.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell for Reduced Listening.”

“To Make a Fool Ask, And You Are The First” new LP for pre-order.

“Blackest Ever Black presents To Make A Fool Ask, And You Are The First, the latest – and, for us, greatest – full-length entry in Ashtray Navigations’ uniquely important, uniquely sprawling – possibly sentient and self-multiplying – discography.

 

It picks up where the nerve-damaged exotica of 2015’s A Shimmering Replica left off…acerbic “surf” guitar and synthetic salt-breeze fit for the Tropic of Yorkshire. Instant immersion in a potent, pungent psychedelia that feels equal parts cosmic and aquatic. What Todd wrenches out of his instrument these days is a language unto itself (perhaps it always was)… a helical, ecstatic, grieving howl…a (super)natural efflorescence, beyond earthly description or transcription…ur-rock and post-everything. But equal emphasis is given here to pulsating machine rhythms and lush keyboard textures, with killer contributions from longtime fellow traveller Mel O’Dubhshlaine.

There were pre-echoes of all this in the recent(ish) Fluctuants and Aero Infinite: but To Make A Fool feels like the culmination, or the fullest expression, of something which was only glimpsed in those earlier works. The side-long ‘Spray Two’ – gently eddying string-pads gradually slashed to all f***k with fraught piano improvisations – is a masterpiece in its own right. At its delirious peak, the whole thing boils over into brooding, arpeggiated noir-techno – Michael Mann’s steadicam roaming Leeds’ B-roads, some kind of tangerine nightmare – before finally cooling into a bleary starfield of pure and sumptuous hypno-tone. This LP is a trip, in the most skull-splitting, soul-crinkling sense of the word, but it soothes and heals as well. A circular and transformative journey to the other side of the underneath and a landmark recording from one of the most adept and visionary nodes in Britain’s freakout underground.”

preorder

 

Blackest Ever Black test pressing arrived!

Well what do you know, 2 announcements in one week! The Blackest Ever Black test pressings turned up on lunch break! Release date/more announcements on this soon…

Upcoming shows, Tusk, Tor and Liverpool Psych

Not had an update in a while, just got back from enjoyable times in Glasgow at Glad Cafe and Supernormal Fest.  Thanks to all involved for making everything great.

Here’s a video of our full set at Supernormal in case you missed it.

We’re very busy with festivals this year!  Still to come, we’re playing Liverpool Psych Fest* on the 24th September, Tor Fest in Todmorden on 1st October, and Tusk in Gateshead/Newcastle on the 25th Oct. Also we’re playing with Tom Carter and Samara Lubelski at Wharf Chambers in Leeds on the 29th September.

Monument to British Rock, one of our most popular albums is finally available in digital format, plus we have very very limited copies of the special edition triple vinyl, now with silver on black sleeves hand screenprinted by Rob Glew of the almighty Guttersnipe.

Speaking or vinyl thingies, there’s a couple more coming really soon.  Keep watching for further announcements…