Short Reviews [Ashley Reaks - 2023 - "Winter Crawls"]

I am pretty sure this is the first time I have come across English musician, collage artist and writer Ashley Reaks, but this is his thirteenth release so there is obviously a depth of material out there to discover. Apparently, work started on this back in 2018, but was repeatedly interrupted and delayed by divorce, relocation, the Covid-19 pandemic and a string of chronic health conditions. Let us hope Ashley is now back to full health as this is an intriguing release which has definitely come right out of the underground and is intriguing to say the least. Ashley Reaks provides vocals, bass, guitar and keyboards, and on this album, he is joined by Lucy Mizen (vocals), Nick Dunne (electric guitars, acoustic guitars, guitar solos), Joel Purnell (saxophones), Rob Hirons (drums) and Dan Mizen (percussion, who also recorded and mixed the release). Reaks says this is more of a proggy album than previous, and he puts a lot of this down to the drumming of Hirons, who is a very “busy” drummer indeed. In fact, I could have done with somewhat less of that approach as there are times when he is detracting from what is happening in front of him and the drums have been kept quite “dry” and separate from the rest of the mix so they do stand out when they should be more in the background. Reaks is not a standard prog artist, if there is indeed such a thing, and has an incredibly varied list of influences which includes Stranglers, cut and paste, Rip Rig And Panic, bebop, Captain Beefheart, collage, Magazine, post-punk, Yes, Ivor Cutler, religious imagery, The Pop Group, Gee Vaucher, psychedelia, Gabriel-era Genesis, Dada, nature books, Devo, Francis Bacon… Interestingly, there is no mention whatsoever of VDGG, the Canterbury Scene (especially Soft Machine), XTC or Cardiacs, but there is plenty of that going on in here as well. This is very much an English album, firmly grounded in the Seventies but with a modern independent approach, the result being an album which refuses to conform to any set expectations and is all the better for it. Easily available on Bandcamp this is an album which will be of interest to anyone who wants their music to contain proggy elements but not sit within the mainstream of that genre.