Ashley Reaks: A Conglomeration of Jockstraps (album)

ONE of the Harrogate scene's most talented, if unorthodox, forces for nearly 20 years now, A Conglomeration of Jockstraps leaves you with the conclusion that artist/musician/poet Ashley Reaks is as bright as a mathematician and as daft as a brush.
Over the course of these brilliantly barmy 25 tracks, many of them lasting less than a minute, you will be in turns amused, horrified, bored and, occasionally, moved.
Though the style goes off in multiple directions, the content is consistent, the philosophical approach established by the opening two tracks.
Football Results has Ash reading the football results like any tea- time Saturday TV broadcast - until the scores are suddenly infected with wicked interjections of non-sequiturs and smut.
Margaret Sweat opts for spoken word poetry to a spooky electronic background.
It could be quite lovely until its lines of lyrical beauty are hijacked by brutal imagery, bad language and pornographic references.
Reaks may delight in undermining his own literary streak and galloping command of English language with shock tactics but he's far from a one tricky pony.
Amid the blizzard of daft voices, backward tapes and musical pastiches, he throws in a  couple of tracks to let you know he can write a good tune if he's in the mood.
Do The Horrongoden starts like any throwaway 80s synth pop hit by Blancmange until the chorus when amazing rapid-fire call and response semi-religious Arabic chanting turns the normal into the truly remarkable.
This Is No Life is a catchy pop-punk gem full of blazing guitars and a Foo Fighters-like chorus.
But melody isn't really the aim on this album where the deep and the deeply silly rub shoulders, where tunefulness is undermined by ugliness and the juvenile and adult battle for control.
There's an over-riding obssession with religion, sex, manners and moral that suggests the real aim is to strip away the thin veneer of civilisation to reveal the depth of abnormality that lies behind what we take to be the 'normal'.
A Conglomeration of Jock Straps sits in a long lineage: the films of David Lynch, the monologues of Ivor Cutler's Tales From A Scottish Room series, the music of The Bonzo Dog Band, the records of The Residents, the cut-up novels of William S Burroughs, the Christmas broadcasts of The Beatles for their fan club (1966-67), the radio humour of The Goons, all the way back to the1920s artists Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp.
This is serious stuff - up to a point. Despite the occasional vocoder effect that makes him sound like Professor Stephen Hawking, Ash owes as much to Frank Sidebottom as Dada, as likely to mock Geoff Capes or Steve Cram as try to explain the meaning of everything, as likely to burst into laughter as his own wit as say something profound.
Surreal or subversive, a Yorkshireman never loses his sense of humour.

Graham Chalmers
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Ashley Reaks : A Conglomeration Of Jockstraps

The first time I encountered Mr Reaks was in the nineties when he was playing with Francis Dunnery, telling rude jokes in-between numbers. Second time was when he was fronting the   short lived Younger Younger 28s-; perhaps the greatest pop band never to have made it from Yorkshire.   I didn't even realise this bizarre collection of poetry, songs and sketches was Mr Reaks until I investigated his my space account. If you imagine a blue version of comedian John Shuttleworth you'll have an idea of where the   melted    mind of Reaks comes   from. The street interviews will have you stitching up your burst   stomach, on hearing life meaning questions such as "Where Do You Keep your collection of Pigeon Erotica" and "Do   you   think there's a satanic message in life dancing!"    Meanwhile, in the sketch football results, we are informed that "The match between Derek Griffiths   and Morning Sickness was called off due to a tremendous spaniel on the pitch". School boy humour inside, there's some snazzy production going on here   and a lot of thought has gone into this release. The poem "The Earth Swan Sings Again" is   inspired and beautiful. John Shuttleworth would no doubt   be pleased that he has inspired Yamaha ditties here such as "Keith Wilson" ( a love song to a hypnotherapist)   but less impressed that   the catchiness of "Milk Is Not Your Uncle" will evoke punch the air moments which will rival his own greatest moment "Pigeons In Flight".        

David Wright - Talk Magazine

'A Conglomeration Of Jockstraps' is available at here