Ashtray Navigations - Para Sol Production
CDR/DL
brb>voicecoil - Alms of Guilt
Muzamuza/Opal Tapes. CD/DL/Lathe cut 12”
I’ve yet to decided whether my Deezer subscription is a blessing or a curse. Having access to 56 million tracks, 30,000 radio stations not to mention innumerable podcasts and playlists and lets not forget the sodding lyrics is like been given the keys to the sweet shop only to get gut ache from overdoing it on the wine gums. On the face of it everything seems totes amazeballs: all the music ever recorded by anybody who stood in front of a microphone for ten of your English pounds sterling per calendar month. Chuck in Bandcamp, an internet connection and digital storage space and I can now happily flog off my entire record/CD/cassette collection thus freeing up valuable space for my toilet roll collection.
Having a Deezer subscription means that I’m in danger of moving from someone who much prefers having an actual physical musical object in their possession to someone who streams music via a smartphone and bluetooth speaker and doesn’t have to get off their arse to turn an LP over every twenty minutes/change a CD every hour. The only problem I have with streaming/downloading is that I loose a connection with the artist/band/project [and sometimes an actual connection when wi-fi goes awol] and besides getting in and out of the Poang is good for me. Getting in and out of that Poang is likely to be a major part of my total exercise between now and the vaccine coming along. Don’t knock it. The more LP’s I have, the more records I play, the fitter I get.
There’s a huge disconnect between streaming/downloading and owning a physical product and even though I may be able to listen to the King Crimson entire back catalogue in chronological order [barring 1975’s live album ‘USA’ which, for what I must assume are contractual reasons, isn’t on there] I feel as if I’m not a part of the music, not a part of what the band wanted me to be which is a buyer of their music, especially on vinyl. Or perhaps Fripp isn’t fussy so long as I’m buying it in one form or another? With Deezer I can listen before I buy though, using Deezer as a sampler if you like, it saves me the bother of buying those albums and tracks that didn’t really click and buy those that I really like which is why the vinyl of Lark’s Tongues in Aspic turned up last week. If you’re the kind of person who’s wasted many a Saturday afternoon digging around in record shops buying things on chance because you like the cover or were swayed by a review in the NME only to discover what you’ve paid good hard money for was crud and that the review was glowing because the reviewer was a friend of the band, then you know this works.
Another downside of Deezer [though this isn’t Deezers fault at all] is that I’ve been down the Prog black hole for far too long now. My Prog peregrinations seeing me arrive via King Crimson at the door of Peter Hammill, which is where I start getting all twitchy. My ongoing battle with Yes has ended. I now declare that they’re a great singles band and if Topographic Oceans had contained 39 tracks of three minutes or less instead of four they might have won me over completely, as it is I’m still unconvinced as to their greatness. Discovering that Geneses wrote a song about supermarkets also threw me: Aisle of Plenty, you can find it on Selling England by the Pound should you be curious enough to hear Peter Gabriel sing the line ‘Birds eye dairy cream sponge on offer this week’.
Can having too much music be a bad thing though? Maybe I just need to hold back and not get too carried away here. Maybe I should be more judicious in my musical selections and rather like that kid in a sweet shop, not get gut ache from overdoing it on the wine gums but instead take my time and suck on a more meditative Mintoe.
You can have the entire digital Ashtray Navigations back catalogue for one hundred and seventy six pounds ten pence exactly, a hefty sum, but keep in mind that you’re keeping two people in bread and water here. It might sound like a lot of money but this also allows those same two people to carry on making some of the best sounds on the planet. After finally putting down the 4CD/LP Greatest Hits job I was cheered to find that new material had already surfaced from Ashtray HQ with a release made entirely from the Toddmiester’s own hand. Para Sol Production could be and is like every other Ashtray Navigations release in that it contains the scraps of every other genre thats ever gone before it. Even Blaxploitation soundtracks, snippets of which I picked up during the first track with Todd chopping out stabbed guitar riffs like he’s got his cuff buttons stuck in the bridge strings. ‘Creaturetime’ is all dreamy swirls and much better value for money than anything I’ve heard from Oneohtrix Point Never, ‘Running California Eyeshutter I Socket Sitting Under The Great Blue Virtual Palm Tree of Your Mind Image Pulling That Old Face Like Seagulls Stole Your Chips or Something’ is a languid beatbox driven slice of ambience over which Todd runs his fingers up and down a piano bashing out notes like Keith Jarrett after one too many in the Fenton.
Hows your rule of six, last orders at 9.30 pm lockdown of sorts going anyway? When I mention that the current coronavirus rules don’t really affect me that much I get accused of being an unsociable misery guts, which is exactly true. Pubs hold about as much appeal to me as Victorian plague pits these days so I’ll see you all on the other side if thats alright with you. Waking up to find that Bunker Boy has got the virus had me spraying the cornflakes but then I thought of Bolsorano who also contracted the virus and survived thus enhancing his reputation as a strong man. Johnson survived too but at least he goes jogging and cycling which might just have been enough to save the oaf, the nearest Bunker Boy gets to exercise is walking up the steps of Air Force one and I bet that tires him out. Or has he got the virus? If he emerges from this intact [which I’m sure he will] he’ll go the same way as Bolsorano and Johnson and escape with reputation enhanced. I don’t usually wish ill will on anybody but in certain circumstances I allow myself exceptions. This is one of them. But I digress.
Last but certainly not least come brb>voicecoil who in my last recent review of theirs I renamed brb>voicecall. For the entire review. Maybe I was dazzled by the super limited clear blue lathe cut slab of wax that it came on? Thats my excuse anyway, that and my inability to see letters where they should be. This comes in that same most desirous format though this time in a stunning transparent green, and CD [via Opal Tapes] and download via Bandcamp which is sort of where I came in. Of the six tracks of treated field recordings, twisted found sounds and cold industrial ambience that populate Alms of Guilt [Kevin Wilkinson, for tis he, describes himself as an ‘audio manipulator’ and ‘sound deconstructor’] my favourite pick would be the nearly ten minute long The Truth of Demons with its clanging elevator cables and rolling steel pipes thats as near to fellow north easterners TNB as we’re going to get here. There be glacier slippage, mic’d up truffle hunting pig snorting through detritus, inhospitable winds, the march of insects, heavy stones dropped in to dark reservoirs on lonely moor tops, the sound-worlds that Wilkinson creates via brb>voicoil are cold and unwelcoming but never less than totally absorbing.
https://muzamuza.bandcamp.com/album/alms-of-guilt
https://ashtraynavigations.bandcamp.com/album/para-sol-production
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