ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS
TO MAKE A FOOL ASK AND YOU ARE THE FIRST (LP)
Label | BLACKEST EVERBLACK |
---|---|
Catalog | BLACKEST056 |
Format | LP |
Discs | 1 |
Category | ROCK/POPS |
Street Date | 2016-11-28 |
- It picks up where the nerve-damaged exotica of 2015’s A Shimmering Replica left off…acerbic “surf” guitar and synthetic salt-breeze fit for the Tropic of Yorkshire. Instant immersion in a potent, pungent psychedelia that feels equal parts cosmic and aquatic. What Todd wrenches out of his instrument these days is a language unto itself - a helical, grieving howl…a (super)natural efflorescence, beyond earthly description or…ur-rock and post-everything. Equal emphasis is given here to pulsating machine rhythms and lush keyboard textures, with contributions Mel O’Dubhshlaine. There were pre-echoes of all this in the recent Fluctuants and Aero Infinite: but “To Make A Fool” feels like the fullest expression of something which was only glimpsed in those earlier works. The side-long ‘Spray Two’ – gently eddying string-pads gradually slashed with fraught piano improvisations – is a masterpiece in its own right. At its delirious peak, the whole thing boils over into brooding, arpeggiated noir-techno – Michael Mann’s steadicam roaming Leeds’ B-roads, some kind of tangerine nightmare – before finally cooling into a bleary starfield of pure and sumptuous hypno-tone. This is a trip, in the most skull-splitting, soul-crinkling sense of the word, but it soothes and heals as well. A circular and transformative journey to the other side of the underneath and a landmark recording from one of the most adept and visionary nodes in Britain’s freakout underground.
- 1. (Another) Hour of the Grubber
2. A Crimson Coin
3. Bellow Organs Spine
4. Spray Two