Well, we intended to have a Broadways Annual Holiday Sale more regular, like, over at Ashtray HQ, but it’s been five years since the last one (my brain hurts a lot, etc), so, with the promise to do this more regular, like, we have a new 60 min mash up of old hard drive fragments, unmixes remixes premixes live frolics and cutting room sweepings served up for your pleasure, and hoping you like.
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Ashtray Navigations spent 2023 playing (nicely) with the other children, and now we have two collaborative or divided releases with two longstanding musical or noisical projects, namely…
Ashtray Navigations & Expose Your Eyes: Ongoing Psychology
Combined forces psychological electronics and near-danceable rhythms from these Yorkshire stalwarts. Digital and limited edition CDR (watch out! see bandcamp caveat)
Ashtray Navigations/Death Squad
“Dense psychedelic electronica from Leeds, UK musician Phil Todd’s long-running avant entity b/w Chicago noisician Michael Krause’s equally long-running post-industrial explorations.”
Split cassette released by No Sides records, US-based folks may wanna order from the label, and we have only 8 copies for sale here, so be swift.
New recordings from earlier this year finally completed and let out of the ol’ bag. Sick of the pristine digital surfaces of recent Ashtray fare, we mixed this one direct to ye olde audio cassette and pumped up the juice. Saturation indeed! File under distortorock, yes it’s noisy, quaint, pummel and bleed, what instrument was that meant to be anyway, punk not dead just smells funny etc etc.
To order without BC, contact us at new address philtoddashnav (at) yahoo (dot) com
We have physical copies at last! There’s no digital/streaming option as yet, but this is being worked on…
If you do not bandcamp or do not want to, it is £11 plus £1.50 postage for the UK (if you are in Europe, best go straight to Fourth Dimension. If elsewhere, well, google it dude! there are, or will be distributors in other regions of the globe). Paypal to usual ashtraynavigations (at) hotmail (dot) com. If you do not paypal, get in touch. All preferences catered for!
Ashtray Navigations are something of a nightmare to write about.
I’ve got a few albums of theirs and they’re all bangers and they’re in the realm of ‘bands you really should see’, despite the fact they don’t seem to play near me anywhere near as much as I’d like on account of my being nowhere near Leeds.
The problem is that their discography is too sprawling to really say much about how a record sits in their trajectory. Discogs has 109 albums listed and I’d be surprised if that was low-balling, given the nature of short-run releases and record-keeping in DIY scenes.
Perhaps you have an AshNav bingo card. If you do, you can cross out “sounds ’80s Miles Davis if he was a bit dirtier” and “I swear that was Tangerine Dream” with this release.First track, “Drink The Moment Thin Fox Legs”, starts off all cowbell and funky asymmetrical shapes, but mutates relentlessly into all sorts of realms — spacey synth sounds and feedbacking drift, pretty wobbly keys, heroic spaghetti western by drugs binge. Last record of theirs I got was suffused with Funkadelic, so I’m wondering if the funk has actually been a part of AshNav for a while now.
For my money, they’re a funny proposition insofar as I could imagine the sort of thing that this record has being massively appealing to a certain sector of people — like I’m sure old weird funk and prog business is massive in some quarters and AshNav are not far away from “what if Funkadelic repeated Maggot Brain a few more times?” It’s a shame, in that context, that they’re most readily associated with noisy underground-y stuff, because I could well imagine this appealing to the £40+ weird ’70s funk re-issue brigade.
Everything AshNav does has a particular melted feel to it and that’s very much present here. Moments which are not massively dissimilar to something like Philip Jeck‘s uncanny loops. Dialogues about drug music are usually pretty stultified, but there’s a sense for me that AshNav lend themselves to being a band to take drugs to for the twenty-first century.And if that’s not your vibe, there’s bits and bobs that’ll remind you of slinky shiny kraut-y vibes, Keith Rowe-ian tremelo, the sort of expansive wash of Acid Mothers Temple or basically a load of Freq-friendly fare. I was also reminded of Spiritualized which I appreciate not everyone’s up for, but I’m standing by Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space as one of the better kraut expositions in the 90s.
Second track is “Return Of The Sun Of Dr. Artur” and I appreciate the old-world grammaticism of Dr. with an uppercase D and a full stop. It’s all about the details, you see. It might be that this record is joined together by a theme of contracting and expanding between funky rhythmic sections and drifty wash. It’s a really effective thing — insofar as it gives an impression of structure (these may be fully composed or improvisations — difficult to tell and probably not important to draw the line).
So you get bits that sound like the Tomorrow’s World theme underwater, a plaintive cornet (?) section, angry refrigerator / frozen bee synths. Tempos shifting within the same song and different elements sliding in and out of the foreground and pulling the music in a load of directions. Some outrageous whammy usage.
The proposition of AshNav in 2023 is maybe difficult insofar as they do release a lot of records and if, like me, you’ve got completist problems, then it’s difficult to push this over another record. Which seems unfair, because this maintains the high quality of the last few AshNav releases I’ve heard. What I’ll say though, is that the AshNav records I’ve heard from the last few years have really been worth it insofar as they do seem to have developed this habit of being loads of genres at once.
It’s not necessarily apparent on the first pass, but the musicality of what used to be a kind of a lo-fi, noisy dronescapes band is massively laudable and perhaps there’s a biographer sticking this album in a pile marked “peak 2020s AshNav – 5*”.
Ah, Ashtray Navigations! I am sure I wrote something like this before, but there was a time when I couldn’t get enough of his music, and I got many of his releases, mainly on CDR and limited vinyl. But, as these things go, interests shift, or, instead, stuff also not arriving to review anymore, resulting in diminishing attention for Phil Todd’s music. Recently, I missed out on a few (I’m taking a look at Discogs) of his
releases, so it’s a bit difficult to comment on his development. At the same time, the music feels like a warm bath, a familiarity (and a longing to have more time than I have and dig out some of the older releases) that is his music. The guitar is Todd’s primary instrument, along with a long line of sound effects, but there are also keyboards, percussive bits and a trumpet. Whereas before, I would have lumped Ashtray Navigations in with the guitar noise terrorists, this new one sees a more psychedelic approach to music. There are two long pieces on this release. ‘Drink The Moment / Thin Fox Legs’ is about 28 minutes, and ‘The Return Of The Sun Of Dr. Artur’ is nearly 20 minutes. In both these pieces, Todd lets his guitar rip and shine. Not as noisy as before, but rather in jazzy, proggy and psychedelic rainbow colours. He knows how to play the six strings and has become quite virtuoso. Or, maybe, he was always the virtuoso, yet we never noticed? Whatever the case, Todd leaves in
enough weird sounds for us lovers of the experiment to enjoy. I do not mean the music is noisy but rougher around the edges. When the guitar isn’t on a solo routine but droning away, and there are loops of rattles and stabs on a synth, there is still that psych edge but edgier, and it works well in contrast with the rest of what the pieces offer. Also, in that respect, is the music a trip, and I mean the word trip in every sense of the word? I don’t know what Todd had while recording the music, but can I also have some? Yet, even without any intoxication (Tuesday 1:43 p.m., what would one use?), this is one hell of a ride. Where did I stash his older work? (Oh, wait, where do I find the time?)” – Frans De Waard
We should have copies for the UK in stock soon!
Review in Outside Left:
Order from Fourth Dimension Records
We’ll hopefully have copies for sale here in a few weeks
Our April radio show coming up for you tomorrow on CAMP Radio, music from Wayne Shorter, Toni Basil, Michael Puig, Mdou Moctar and many more! 3PM GMT Thursday 9th March and repeated 23.00 EST
Also on Saturday 9th April we are playing in London as part of 10ish Years Of Blue Tapes at Ilklectik with Soft-Bodied Humans, Adrian Northover, Sue Lynch, Steve Beresford & Dave Tucker & Suren Seneviratne
https://dice.fm/event/8rad5-10ish-years-of-blue-tapes-9th-apr-iklectik-london-tickets
And our new CD “One From Then Another” on Fourth Dimension Records is currently in production
“Phil Todd’s existence as Ashtray Navigations began in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has been everything from a fully fledged group to a solo endeavour that’s embraced ur-drone-orientated noise, sprawling psychedelia, crude electronics and the more lysergic realms of the avant-garde. Amongst many other things.
On ‘One From Then Another’, however, we are presented with two lengthy pieces (the first of which is broken into two sections and clocks up almost 30 minutes in total) that trawl through not only the most troubled and darkest psychedelic waters oozing from a subterranean space, but also the interstellar jazz-fusion of prime Herbie Hancock. To state that both pieces take the listener on a journey would make for a cliche best avoided, but this is precisely what they do.
Fourth Dimension Records is proud to see this addition to Phil Todd’s prolific output appear on a roster already heavily peppered with genuine misfits, outsiders and the kind of folk who defy lazy pigeonholing.
Released as a limited run (300 only) digipak in late April 2023. In production now.”
We have a great new radio show coming up for you tomorrow on CAMP Radio, music from Duke of Iron, Television, Jeff Beck, Cerrone, The Coasters, Electric Eels, Herbie Hancock and many more! 3PM GMT Thursday 9th March and repeated 23.00 EST
Album A Shimmering Replica (LP+CD) out now on VHF records
ashtraynavigations 