1856 to 2026 – DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
This was 20 years ago today!
Ascension Band played at the Meatwaters Festival at Happy, in Wellington. We look so young… happy anniversary guys!
By auspicious coincidence, this morning (exactly 20 years on) I found an original DVD of the full performance (as well as discs of the 2005 gigs with the 18-piece imperial phase lineup).
Continue reading “Ascension Band: Live 2004”A compilation by Wellington NZ free improv trio The Winter
Simon Sweetman – drums, percussion
Mike Kingston – guitars, cello (2-5), clarinet (7,11,14), charango (7,10)
Dave Edwards – guitars, vocal (3), harmonica (4,7,9), banjo (7), ukulele (7,9,11), saxophone (10,14), piano (10), bass (12,13), electronics (6,8,13)
Wellington, New Zealand,
free improv music trio, formed on winter solstice day June 2003.
An archive compilation,
Continue reading “The Winter: Shortest Days 2003-2015”‘Articulation Incommunicate‘ includes an abrasive electric guitar, dictaphone and electric razor performance at the Bomb the Space Festival 2004. This is my earliest extant gig footage, and one of my very few music videos to have over a thousand views. Go figure!
Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, harmonica, dictaphone, electronics, electric guitar (11-12), violin (13), vocal & lyrics
with
Perhaps the most lo-fi fiffdimension album of all. These tracks were primitively recorded on a cassette dictaphone; based on words scribbled in notebooks; unmelodic; unheard by anyone else at all (until their release in 2020); and seemed like unfinished demos at the time…
… but in hindsight may represent the culmination of my early period (a lo-fi postpunk fusion of songs, spoken word and free improv – www.fiffdimension.com/1997-2005).
Continue reading “Articulation Incommunicate (2004)”“Emptying out of yr nautical caveman comfort / programming lines in size laden torridness hill upon plains / dense foreclosure and venomous worry / salute me and line / burrow tunnel and moth / soon I taste the next pavement / I invent to cause home”
Animated visuals, with electric guitar loops, one-stringed bass, and drums – the opening track from the ‘Ngumbang‘ album (get the free download) – w/ Emit Snake-beings & Nat da Hatt
The title ‘Huia Vortex’ refers to the location where the track was recorded, in Huia, a small village on the outskirts of west Auckland.
It’s not necessarily related to ‘Swansong (for the Huia)‘ (2004), the second album by The Winter, an electro-acoustic trio improvisation in tribute to the extinct New Zealand bird the huia by Dave Edwards, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman. Its 19-minute final track remains an underrated fiffdimension epic. [send us your review]
The post-punk big band Ascension Band convened in 2003-2005… here’s the 2004 lineup performing at the Meatwaters Festival at Happy in Wellington.
| Nigel Patterson – hammond organ & conductor Dave Edwards – guitar & electronics Mike Kingston – guitar Jesse Toews – bass Warwick Donald – bass Antony Milton – violin & electronics Damian Stewart – laptop Jason Secto – cornet Simon O’Rorke – percussion Myles Climo – drums |
The following year we won best music award in the 2005 Wellington Fringe Festival
A compilation of songs, spoken word and instrumentals from the early phase of my gloriously unsuccessful career:
“Whilst shopping from fiffdimension, make sure to get hold of ‘Gleefully Unknown’ – a best-of compilation of Dave Edwards’ music from 1997 to 2005. Rough outsider folk-blues mysteries, dissonant rock textures, electric and acoustic improvisations…
“Edwards strikes me as one of the most overlooked musicians from the fertile lands of New Zealand and if you need a fresh start this might very well be the place.” – Mats Gustafsson, The Broken Face
by Dave Edwards (acoustic & electric guitars, harmonica, bass, banjo, vocal), with
Featuring tracks from the albums
… if you enjoy this, try the sequels Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012 and Other Islands: 2012-2018
The Winter‘s 2004 sequel to Parataxes was a tribute to extinct New Zealand bird the Huia.
After this Mike and Dave moved to Australia, and the band next played in 2009.
Excerpts from the album appear on the band’s Shortest Days: 2003-2015 compilation:
fiffdimension 