Ashtray Navigations

Last updated

Ashtray Navigations
Origin Stoke-On-Trent, England
Genres Psychedelic, noise, experimental rock, chillwave, avant garde, drone
Years active1991–present
LabelsMemoirs of an Aesthete / Qbico / Absurd / Menlo Park / Last Visible Dog / Freedom From American Tapes / Celebrate Psi Phenomenon / Jewelled Antler Goldsoundz / Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers / Siltbreeze / Deep Water Acres
Associated actsMoral Holiday, Xenis Emputae Travelling Band, Anna Planeta, Green Monkey, Inca Eyeball
Website http://ashtraynavigations.wordpress.com
MembersPhil Todd
Mel Ó Dubhshláine
Past membersBen Reynolds
Alex Neilson
Phil Legard
Big Mike
Chloe Jarvis
Evelyn Kharag

Ashtray Navigations is an English experimental music group centred upon Phil Todd and active since 1991. Colloquially referred to as "Ash Nav", the group operates out of Todd's home in Stoke-on-Trent, from which he also ran the record labels Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers and, subsequently, Memoirs of an Aesthete. The project has also released music through labels such as Siltbreeze, Jewelled Antler, American Tapes, Fargone Records, Menlo Park, E.F. Tapes and Freedom From.

Contents

Whilst the music evades easy categorisation due to variations in sound, approach and personnel, it often incorporates extended droning and lengthy guitar pieces. James Blackshaw described the Ashtray Navigations sound as "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." [1] The Wire's David Keenan has described Phil Todd/Ashtray Navigations as "a trashcan antidote to LaMonte Young." [2]

Reviewing Todd's 36th album, The Love that Whirrs, critic Larry Dolman wrote "It's a pretty mammoth piece of work – almost 80 minutes of music spread out over six heavy tracks. They tend to start as intense sun-blinding drone-fields, but if you hold on tight for a minute or two and adjust yourself to these new conditions, you'll start to notice a wealth of detail, provided by a real band of ringers. Todd has Alex Neilson (Directing Hand, accompanist with some Jandek live performances) on shimmering, fracturing percussion and Ben Reynolds on raga-style guitar and banjo. (Also, one Melanie Delaney appears on one epic track, playing reeds & tapes.) Trash drone, free skiffle, new electric raga, sun blindness music, call it what you will, this is a powerful statement." [3]

Although Todd still records solo, most recent Ashtray Navigations titles and live shows have been undertaken by a duo of Todd and Melanie Crowley or by a trio of Todd, Crowley and one other, often Phil Legard (Xenis Emputae Travelling Band) although the line-up has also been joined at one time or another by Alex Neilson, Bill Kouligas (Family Battle Snake) and Ruaraidh Sanachan (Nackt Insecten) – the latter two can be heard on "Backstage Education" a limited four-disc document of Ash Nav's 2007 summer tour.

Their discography is extensive, with many limited releases on cassette and CDR formats: albums with a wider distribution include Four Raga Moods (which was followed-up several years later by Four More Raga Moods), The Love that Whirrs, To Your Fucking Feather'd Wings, Dirt Mummies & Bloody Amps, You Cannot Tell Cigars.... and Use Copenhagen 69 Guitars and Park Drive Circular Effects Pedals Exclusively.

Partial discography

Related Research Articles

Final (band)

Final is a project of English musician Justin Broadrick, creator of the band Godflesh, which he started when he was just 13 years old. Unlike Godflesh, Final is primarily electronic in nature, taking on a space-like, dark ambient sound.

Alastair Galbraith New Zealand musician

Alastair Galbraith is a New Zealand musician and sound artist from Dunedin.

Richard Youngs is an English musician with a prolific and diverse output, including many collaborations. Based in Glasgow since the early 1990s, his extensive back catalogue of solo and collaborative work formally begins with Advent, first issued in 1990. He plays many instruments, most commonly choosing the guitar, but he has been known to use a wide variety of other instruments including the shakuhachi, accordion, theremin, dulcimer, a home-made synthesizer and even a motorway bridge. He also released an album which was entirely a cappella.

Growing is a drone music/ambient music/noise music band formed in Olympia, Washington, and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. The group was founded in 2001 by Kevin Doria, Joe Denardo, and Zack Carlson (drums). Carlson left following their first album, and the band continued as a duo until 2009, when they recruited Sadie Laska to form a new trio. The group's music has gradually progressed from slow, instrumental drone pieces through works in noise and ambient music toward more propulsive, rhythm driven music. Their live shows are consistently known for being very loud and for playing straight through their set without breaks or banter between songs.

Davenport, or The Davenport Family, was a musical collective from Madison, Wisconsin. The project was initiated by Clay Ruby in 2002. Their musical style, difficult to categorize, owes more to freeform jazz, psychedelic rock, and experimental avant-garde music than to traditional folk music, and may be loosely attributed to such genres as free folk, psychedelic folk, freak folk or New Weird America. The Davenport Family name existed actively until 2005. Presently, all original members participate in a similar band, which operates under the name Second Family Band.

Vibracathedral Orchestra is an England-based drone ensemble that has been active since 1998.

Big City Orchestra is a long-running art/anti-art group based generally in California. They have an ever rotating cast of musician and nonmusician members. They were formed in 1979 as the house band for a network of artist residences in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.

Thanksgiving (band) Musical artist

Thanksgiving and Adrian Orange & Her Band are the names under which Portland, Oregon singer/songwriter Adrian Orange performs. First adopting the "Thanksgiving" moniker around 1999–2000, Orange played experimental folk music, often accompanying himself on guitar and self-recording his albums using analog equipment. While Thanksgiving is essentially a solo act, Orange often collaborates with other musicians in his recordings and performances.

Alex Neilson is an English drummer, percussionist and singer who is based in Glasgow but grew up in Leeds. He is a founding member and main songwriter of folk-rock group Trembling Bells (2008-2018). He is also known for his continuing collaborations with Alasdair Roberts, Will Oldham and Richard Youngs, and for his work with elusive American singer/songwriter Jandek.

A Band

The A Band are a British musical collective formed in Nottingham in the late 1980s. In 2005, The Wire compared the band's importance to that of AMM and SME, and noted their lack of musical training.

Neil Campbell is a British musician, notable for his vast catalogue and his many collaborations. In 2005, The Wire declared that he, Richard Youngs and Matthew Bower had "provided the map co-ordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the 80s and 90s". Pitchfork media have referred to him as "one of the most important experimental musicians of the last 20 years".

Mattin is an artist from Bilbao working mostly with noise and improvisation. Mattin also has written about improvisation, free software and against the notion of intellectual property. In 2001 Mattin formed Sakada with Eddie Prévost and Rosy Parlane. He has over 70 releases in different labels around the world. He runs the experimental record labels w.m.o/r and Free Software Series, and the netlabel Desetxea. Mattin publishes his music under the no-licence of Anti-copyright. With Anthony Iles, he has edited the book Noise & Capitalism.

Knurl is the noise music project of Canadian experimental composer Alan Bloor. Based in Quebec, Bloor has been performing and recording Knurl material since 1994, when his seminal harsh noise release "Initial Shock" was released. He has released over one hundred albums internationally, and has performed with Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore.

Aidan Baker Canadian musician

Aidan Baker is a musician from Toronto, Ontario, Canada who has released numerous records both as a solo artist and as part of various side projects, including Nadja, ARC, Caudal and Mnemosyne. He has also written several books of poetry.

Zs is a Brooklyn, New York-based experimental band. Since the band's inception, Zs has incarnated as everything from a sextet to a duo, now solidified into the quartet of Patrick Higgins, Greg Fox (percussion), Sam Hillmer and Michael Beharie (electronics). While Zs' music has been variously categorized as no wave, noise, post-minimalist, drone, and psych, it is primarily concerned with making music that challenges the physical and mental limitations of both performer and listener. The band has been heralded by The New York Times as "one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York."

Psychedelic Horseshit is an American band from Columbus, Ohio, that plays a microgenre of lo-fi noise pop that they named "shitgaze".

Mike Tamburo, also known as Brother Ong is an independent musician, sound explorer, music educator, filmmaker, musical instrument builder, interdisciplinary sound artist, gong enthusiast, storyteller, writer, meditation teacher, installation artist, painter, currently living in New Kensington, PA. He is a well known multi-instrumentalist and plays the hammered dulcimer, gong, shahi baaja, swarmandal, autoharp, the crowned eternal, tuning forks, guitar, percussion, electronic instruments, bulbul tarang, bass gopichand, gulbulgar, singing bowls, bells and clarinet. He runs 2 small labels called: New American Folk Hero and Sounds Eternal. He teaches Kundalini yoga, Nāda yoga, sound therapy and Experimental Instrument Building. Early in Tamburo's career he gained notoriety for his string playing. In many of his early performances he began to enter into altered states of consciousness and have out of body experiences while performing. In order to understand these experiences he went into years of self study; exploring Kundalini Yoga, energy work, the therapeutic use of sound and how sound effects consciousness, human perception and self healing. His love for long sustained overtones and psychoacoustics led him to working with multiple gongs and other tuned metal instruments as well as exploring the healing power of mantra and toning. He has traveled the United States extensively, performing over 1500 shows in his career. He writes about many of his adventures in an ongoing collection of stories called Without Beginning, Middle Or End. He has also curated 3 years of the Fantastic Voyagers Music Festival. He performed and recorded for several years with Crown Of Eternity with his ex-wife Galina Haralambava.

The Goslings were an American drone rock and noise rock band from Florida, United States, with releases on labels such as Not Not Fun Records, Crucial Blast Records, and Archive Recordings. The core members of the band are Leslie Soren (vocals) and Max Soren (guitar) with a rotating roster of drummers which have included Brendan Grubb, Adel Souto, Rick Smith, Paul Leroy and Steve Carrera. The Goslings' sound is often characterized as "lo-fi," noisy, and heavy but also beautiful and psychedelic. The group self-records all of their own albums on cassette tape or reel-to-reel tape, are somewhat reclusive and do not tour. They have had a number of releases since forming in 2002 but their signature album to date is considered to be Grandeur of Hair.

The discography of artist musician Henrik Nordvargr Björkk consists of many projects and collaborations, commonly known as Nordvargr.

Warning Light is an American ambient/drone recording project primarily featuring multi instrumentalist Drew Haddon. The band has existed in various forms since 2003, and though formerly based out of Asheville, North Carolina is now in Atlanta, Georgia.

References

  1. Blackshaw, James (2005). "Review of Ashtray Navigations' "To Your Fucking Feather'd Wings"". FoxyDigitalis.com. Archived from the original on 25 February 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2007.
  2. Keenan, David. "Ashtray Navigations". The Wire. Archived from the original on 5 March 2007. Retrieved 6 March 2007.
  3. Dolman, Larry (2006). "Review of Ashtray Navigations' "The Love that Whirrs"". Blastitude. Retrieved 6 March 2007.