Ashtray Navigations
The Love that Whirrs
[Click here for audio sample]
English artist
Phil Todd has been an underground presence for well over a decade, engaging in
countless groups and collaborations, signing on as an occasional member of
Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof!, and releasing numerous documents of
dissident art via his Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers and Memoirs of an Aesthete
labels. Todd’s major achievement, though, is his ongoing solo project Ashtray
Navigations. Releasing a baffling amount of cassettes, LPs, CDs and CD-Rs, Todd
has refined a singular take on modern sound construction that references the
dynamics of rock, the emotional evisceration of blues and the white-light
intensity of noise.
Over 70
minutes of 'trash drone' which will quickly find a beloved home among fans of
VHF records (I.E. Neil Campbell, Matthew Bower, Richard Youngs, etc.) as well as
the New Zealand low-fi scene.
"This
is one of those recordings that sounds like every non western culture is playing
their instruments(amped) all at the same time. Infinite depths of drone are
chipped away at with pinpricks of metal and stone sounding percussion. Strings,
wind instruments, and unknown electrical noise sources all coalesce into a very
forward moving sound. The movement is slow and steady but a sense of
inevitability and invincibility is created. This is drone/noise/whatever not to
be fucked with. Scouring, lulling, creeping. It says play real damn loud right
there on the packaging and that's what I did(on semi-shitty computer speakers).
And I heard a sound that will appeal to not only the hipsters just passing
through, but hardcore dirtdroners, free noise clatterers, and those already
tuned to this frequency. ..Raw noise, strummed acoustic strings,
freedomized reed instruments, more wasted synthesizer, buried amp buzz, more
open-ended drumming & hitting, and god knows what else can be found on the [...]
disc. The thickness and application change but the intent, love that does truly
whir and destroy always stays the same."
--Warren Realrider