First Ashtray full length of 2017. Its been a while (for us), so there’s two come at once. One is mostly long pieces slowly constructed over mid-2016, plus a tune you may have heard us play live. The other is all short pieces in differing styles, all Ashtray style. Digital available now, CDR versions land next week.
or if you just want the CD-Rs via us, £5 each, get in touch.
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
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.
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 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:
Orange Proof Document (unreleased album from 10 years ago)
Some more digital revisitations of our past glories coming soon, so please keep watching!
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
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.”
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.”
“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.”
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…
Album A Shimmering Replica (LP+CD) out now on VHF records
