Stuart Chalmers - The Heart of Contemplation
Tavern Eightieth. TVE. Cassette/CD/DL
Stuart Chalmers - The Heart of Instinct
TQN-aut. CD/DL
Stuart Chalmers & Alan Courtis - Rtuals of Cmmon Lnguage
Steep Gloss. Cassette/DL
Neil Campbell - Perimeter Ghost Bloom
10” lathe/CDR/DL
Howard Stelzer & Neil Campbell - Their Crowning Achievement.
Chocolate Monk. Choc 485. CD
Excuse me while I linger a little longer within the Ashtray Navigations folds. It's been a hot week filled with restless sleep and tired days, evenings spent behind drawn curtains, evenings spent in darkened rooms too tired and listless to do nothing much but listen to music.
To hand I have three drawers filled with CD's and cassettes. The bottom drawer is all Bob and Neil, the middle drawer is Mrs Fisher's; Bruce, The Beatles, Fardo, Flamenco and a smattering of those male troubadours who passed through in the 90's on their way to the small venues and an ever smaller fan base. In the top drawer lie numerous United Dairies tapes and all my three inch CD's.
I pulled out a handful of these three inchers and was surprised at how many had the words 'Ashtray Navigations' written on them. They must be breeding in there. This comes after last weeks digging around in the upstairs back room [IFHQ] where it came as a similar surprise to discover how many LP's and CD's of a five inch nature I had with the exact same words on them. So every weekday evening this last heatwave week I've been sat bereft of energy listening to Ashtray Navigations at a volume capable of being heard by me but not Mrs Fisher, who is sat at the opposite side of the room writing and is incapable of picking up high frequencies due to her hearing being buggered [only occasionally does her head pop up and swivel like an owls 'is there an alarm going off somewhere?'] as the still, humid air does nothing much but make us wish for rain and cooler nights.
It felt good revisiting the musical past in such circumstances. It felt good sharing Ashtray Navigations with the darkening night and going to bed beneath thin sheets with a droning sound ringing in my head, wondering to myself as I tried to find sleep, why I hadn't played 'To Get Beyond Nihilism by Revaluing Combat' for fifteen years and that if I'd have been asked to contribute to Imaginary Greatest Hits this would have been it, a three inch CD of spacious, droney, Indian tinged, sawing violin, skittering drums and shamanic LS6 groans that would have sat in the middle of the other four CD's like a big fat bullseye.
Somewhere along the line things turned up in the post and the inbox and then the weather cooled; Stuart Chalmers, Alan Courtis, Neil Campbell, Howard Stelzer and these slowly found their way into my Ash Nav perambulations. And as the weather changed so did my listening choices.
Stuart Chalmers has done the right thing and disappeared beneath ground, into the caves of North Yorkshire if memory serves. I remember seeing videos of him clambering around slimy subterranean rocks, muttering curses as his footing slipped while trying to find purchase for his equipment. I'm thinking he may well have taken the swarmandal down there and recorded the resonances provided by such natural surroundings before taking them home to add shortwave radio broadcasts and other effects. All of which produce some truly wonderful contemplative atmospheres. Intriguingly, we're told that these six 'Contemplations' [5,8,4,58,84 and 6] were 'improvised/recorded/edited B-I-W [which I'll assume is Burley-in Wharfdale] between the years 1979 and 2019. Whatever, some of these are beautifully constructed with Chalmer's meditative water drips and drones providing for blissful encounters. When Chalmers layers and dubs multiple wobbly swarmandals the effect is almost Disney Soundtrack-esque, like when you find the protagonists being serenaded by mermaids at 20,000 leagues beneath the waves all in azure blue and wavy lines. A release worthy of its title. Comes in an opaque cassette shell and printed card cover that's held together with transparent printed obi strip. For those who covet such things. Me for instance.
Sharing a similar title and maybe being some part of a series of related releases comes The Heart of Instinct. Recorded under the same circumstances only with a heavier leaning towards African rhythm, drone and analogue beat. As in 'Instinct 2' which has a low end riff that's not a million miles away from some of Pan Sonic's heavier moments and Instinct 3 & 4 which build into hypnotic rituals that aren’t far off Konono No1 territory. Replace swarmandal with thumb piano and you have some idea.
Theres no sign of any heatwave on the Chalmers and Courtis collaboration which has a cover of an unwelcoming landscape as taken through a rain lashed window. For some reason this collaboration took two years to find a label seeing as how these four tracks were put together during the autumn and winter of 2018. Theres certainly something autumnal in what they've created; open vistas of a bleak nature where chilly winds constantly drone while being suffused with radio static, treated field recordings, the rubbing together of metal things and death. Courtis's guitar doles out distant churning chords before being cut, replaced by the amplified motor hum of a dodgy Walkman and muffled tape going in reverse. There are drips and the distant sound of fire and a feeling of dread. Chalmers swarmandal is reduced to gentle frottage, clicks, pulls and rolls. Somewhere in there is the beginning of the winter solstice and Christmas carols. Ugh.
[This also a good time to remind you that the entire digital Chalmers back catalogue is available for a measly £20, a ridiculously low price for what must be one of the best back catalogues on Bandcamp].
In another part of Yorkshire Neil Campbell is running up that hill as part of his daily exercise. The view from the top is quite stunning, we passed it in the car last week, and you have to pinch yourself that you are indeed still in West Yorkshire and haven't been transported to the Carpathians through some rip in the space time continuum. Which may be a leap of logic too far but these are strange times and you are allowed these thoughts. After all me and Mrs Fisher haven't been much further than Cleckheaton of late so our Sunday morning runs in the car up past Kirkheaton have been gaining added importance.
Campbell as last seen in the pages of Wire magazine extolling the virtues of having his mind concentrated by the lockdown and how the discovery of an empty farmers shed/teenager shag shed/drug taking barn led to en plain air impromptu recording sessions. If the results went in to Perimeter Ghost Bloom, which judging by the results I'm pretty sure they did, then the leg ache was entirely worthwhile; a pastoral suite of six segued tracks the last and lengthiest being the one you'll want to buy a hammock for. Heres where chifchaffs and magpies mingle with tinkling toy xylophones, where spectral zithers disappear in to crystal clear skies, where between between station shortwave radio static lies a gently plucked acoustic guitar that rings out the purest of notes. I've listened to plenty of what Campbell has recorded over the years and this has to be one of his most serene and affecting releases. A release that could only have been born out of these strange times. A paean to the natural world, which if you haven't noticed is still going about its business. When winter arrives and the days shorten and the sun disappears for days on end and if I don't go out of the house again between now and proven vaccine time, I will always have this to remind me that there is a wonderful world out there. [The first four tracks are available on a lathe cut 10” with squashed flower artwork as available from the man himself, while a CDR and the DL contain the much longer sixth track].
Back on the street there's a Campbell/Stelzer collaboration. Stelzer as known for his tape manipulation work, if thats what you'd like to call it. A man for whom a 40 year old Demis Roussos tape isn't just a 40 year old Demis Roussos tape but the germ of new ideas. I haven't seen him since I was on Facebook years ago, last seen selling all his CD's which he’d stacked into a huge cube about the size of a small family car. I've not heard anything of his for a while so it was good to reacquaint myself over this hour long drone. But where does Campbell start and where does Stelzer start during these several subtle shifts in drone dynamics? I hear Campbell's starkly rung electric guitar notes, randomly struck cymbal and the barely audible honks of someone practicing the saxophone three floors up and two blocks down, this must be Stelzer, out recording in the street and alleyways building up his work until its becomes something else entirely. An ominous drone that groans with the hum of machinery and spanners dropped on cold stone floors, a drone that swells and throbs and like all good drones carries you away until it's inevitable conclusion.
I see the weathers turned.
https://wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-heart-of-contemplation
https://stuartchalmers.bandcamp.com/album/the-heart-of-instinct
https://stuartchalmers.bandcamp.com/album/rtuals-of-cmmon-lnguage
https://theneilcampbell.bandcamp.com/album/perimeter-ghost-bloom
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