Packing 3 tracks onto their first piece of vinyl for Trensmat, the ultra-prolific Ashtray Navigations bring 20 years of recording experience to the table for you, the discerning listener.

A-side 'Monkey Music/Throw Money At The Monkeys' marries gentle melodic guitar twanging to intense trebly arpeggios and ascending/descending sweeps of synth. An effect at once calming and unnerving, the ride lasts for almost six minutes, giving ample time to get lost before snapping back to reality long enough to turn the record over.

'Dinshan P Ghadali' the shorter of the two tracks on the B, is a seemingly momentary snapshot where melancholic pads and fretwork intertwine beneath a slow electronic pulse. 'Rocket Dust Slipping Out Of Your Mouth Some Afternoon' begins with a clean analogue synth line that is soon accompanied by multiple layers of soaring guitars and white noise - all of which is held together for a time with sparse electronic percussion before the layers are eventually peeled back to a serene finale...and the rocket dust settles.

Of course we wouldn't just leave you hanging like that - on the sleeve is a URL to take you to an exclusive digital extra piece, 'War Is Like A Cake'. This near 20-minute blowout features soothing ambient waves throughout, though it does contrast with the relative calm of the vinyl tracks - the noise war begins 55 seconds in and is served slice by slice for much of the remaining duration.

Pre-orders will be immediately sent a link to the download package.

VERY limited edition 7" in full colour wraparound picture sleeve (+ 3 downloads).

Aug 2011, TR023.

Monkey Music/Throw Money At The Monkeys
Dinshan P Ghadali
Rocket Dust Slipping Out Of Your Mouth Some Afternoon
First we've heard in a long while from this prolific home recordist, going on 20 years now, and while at one point we may have gotten a wee bit burnt out on AN, we have to say, this new single is definitely reminding us why we liked it so much in the first place.
The A side begins all lo-fi with a spidery melody unwinding over a bed of swirling electronics, laced with some raga like buzz, a little droney psychedelia, would have been perfectly happy to listen to just that for five minutes, but the side shifts dramatically, and the sound is transformed into a sort of cosmic synth swirl, the sort of sound that would be right at home on an Emeralds record, a sun dappled wall of blissy hazy soft focus buzz.
The flipside follows a similar pattern, this time opening with some slow synth creep, sounding a bit like a lost John Carpenter soundtrack, and then it too blossoms into another chunk of kosmische bliss out, this time, a high end raga drone that sounds like Sunroof! crossed with Muslimgauze, driven by a pulsing rhythm, everything wreathed in a blurred shimmer and tangled up with muted psychedelic leads, totally heady and hypnotic, and another one of those tracks that could have stretched out forEVER.
Gorgeous stuff, and again, we're reminded of just how much we may have been missing Ashtray Navigations. Not sure how limited these are, but we're guessing, probably pretty limited, so grab one before they're gone.
Aquarius Records


Ashtray Navigations (a.k.a Leeds's very own pony-tailed improv superstar Phil Todd) returns with another slice of astral fun courtesy of the Trensmat label. This rare 7" outing features three new cuts, all of the (awesomely) cosmic variety. The A-side 'Monkey Music/Throw Money At The Monkey' explores Todd's current interest in the ultra cosmic synth and guitar workouts of Emeralds and the like. This is like high energy New Age music that combines the intensity of arpeggiated synth at all out volumes with slow burning eastern-infused wah jams. Flip it and you get 'Dinshan P. Ghadali' that again flirts with eastern guitar wig-outs but this time introduces a Carpenter-esque '80s synth drone. This is followed by 'Rocket Dust Slipping Out Of Your Mouth Some Afternoon' that indulges in some impressive guitar fuzz theatrics and cosmic white noise. This one's got a bit of Ferraro/Sun Araw about it and is surprisingly righteous. Definitely Todd at his most upbeat and adventurous, this 7" contains some of his best material I've heard. Go Phil!
Norman Records


Mind blowing psychotropic workout is what you get with this little gem, fairly certain that we haven’t featured anything by Ashtray Navigations or more precisely Phil Todd previously which if anything is a much a loss to us than anything else - safe to say he’s been plying his out there cosmic kookiness for nigh on 20 years now traversing ever deeper into un-chartered aural terrains of pops outer wilderness. Three cuts feature on this ’sold out at source’ limited 7 inch for the ever admired trenSmat imprint (though the cooler heads among you should be able to source a copy - chiefly via Aquarius or Normans I shouldn’t wonder). First up on the listening perch sits ’monkey music / throw money at the monkeys’ a big bearded beatnik beauty, a kind of stoner psyche folk nugget on Tibetan retreat presaged with all manner of middle Eastern Tablas, oscillating electro loops and chill toned cerebral ambience which should appeal in the first instance to those tripped out freaksters among you who’ve lain awake at night wondering what sounds might invade your headspace where the master musicians of the bukkake ever to share studio space with Saddar Bazaar  - certainly something to consider rolling up a dusty copy of Ptolemaic Terrascope to and making a fat ’un to smoke. Over on the flip awaits ’Dinshan P Ghadali’ a hulking lunar leviathan, sparse and lonesome and sounding not unlike some lost and tripped dream toned droned out Tangerine Dream colluding with Carpenter score from the late 70’s which after a brief spell sunbursts and peels resplendently into the bliss kissed gem that is ’rocket dust slipping out of your mouth some afternoon’ which admittedly has proven to be our favoured moment of the set in recent days not least because aside its zonked out dream machine hypnosis and acutely applied Arabesque tweaked progressive psychotropia this blighter literally mushrooms inside your head like some lysergic carnival free for all to imagine a supercharged Orb spiked with a side serving of the Magic Mushroom Band, the Eskimos of Egypt and a healthy dollop of ‘scene 30’ era Echoboy which all said and to borrow loosely from a famous TV time lord sounds bigger on the inside than on the outside. If you do manage to nab the wax copy there’s also a link getting you all the cuts as downloadable mp3’s with the added bonus of throwing in a sub 20 minute sonic shocker ’war is like a cake’ - a terror drone titan of controlled white noise attrition that once acclimatised to soon reveals itself as a would be desolate distress signal pulsating throughout the vast cosmic voids summarily fractured and frazzled by the sand scalding skree scouring storms of the intervening asteroid belts - Zombi admirers will find much to swoon to. All in all perhaps the finest Trensmat outing to date and certainly the most fried and flipped of the second season so far.
Losing Today


The EP has three tracks, three short jams. Not extracts from longer pieces (something that I dislike) but three pieces recorded specifically for this 7" release. They have beginnings and ends.
"Monkey Music/Throw Money at the Monkeys" has an awakening of guitar and synthesizers. The sound is not too far from Section 25 and their "Key Of Dreams" LP. The synthesizer rush blossoms into....krautrock, moments later tablas work their way around the drifting guitar. It is beautifully uplifting. "Dinshan F Ghadali" is a short piece of floating guitars and keyboard drone. "Rocket Dust Slipping Out Of Your Mouth Some Afternoon" is a fantastic instrumental piece. It is 1970's prog rock sped up a few revolutions. The works of Greenslade came to mind whilst listening to this beauty. (is that a bad thing)?
How long have the Ashtrays sounded like this? Is their a full album of this material? Can anyone out there help? Buy from www.trensmat.com or http://ashtraynavigations.wordpress.com you will not regret it.
MuhMur

The sleeve image of a bushel full of Swiss Army knives defies utility, and the music does much the same on this three song, 33 rpm single. Spidery guitars embedded in whooshing synths with well-caffeinated tablas pattering underneath, it’s not for dancing, nor for spacing; it just is. Once you get over that, it’s pretty pleasant, and if you want more, it comes with a download option that includes an extra 20-minute track – try fitting that on a single.
Still Single


One never knows how many fellow pilots Phil Todd has aboard, but it sounds like a few here. This new AshNav single is one of their most fully tripped-out efforts ever - a purist wheeze into the bong-smoke of post-form instrument stonery.
The Wire