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”Celebrating 25 years of fiffdimension!
A collection of short tracks by Dave Edwards and collaborators.
“Double disc collection of more than two decades’ worth of live and studio-recorded tunes by Dave Edwards, who you may have heard recently as part of The Troubled Times with Antony Milton. It’s quite a diverse listen!
“You get some concise and catchy pop songs, some full-on rockers, banjo excursions, improv freak-out, poetry, acoustic blues, folk songs, scrambled noise… there’s something here for everybody. A good intro to Dave’s dauntingly deep discography.”
– Howard Stelzer, Noisy Bandcamp.
Produced by Antony Milton; and features Paul Winstanley, Chris O’Connor, Simon O’Rorke,Chris Palmer, Sam Prebble, Mike Kingston, Francesca Mountfort, Damian Stewart, Emit Snake-Beings, Nat da Hatt, Steve Duffels, and Oscar (the dog).
2CD double album. 35 tracks spanning 25 years. Comes in gatefold card case with full colour photography by Jechtography and James Gilberd. Includes download of the digital album.
Continue reading “2CD compilation 1998-2023”“Electric (Yang)/Acoustic (Yin) boasts some wildly different tracks; short instrumentals (the guitar and percussion of King Street Boogie, the piano and birdsong of Tui and Grey Sky, the guitar, rain, and bucket- possibly oboe too- of Classical Rain Bucket), song-length instrumentals (the gorgeous and floaty Kalbarri Coastline, the spaced-out psychedelia of Shuffling The Tarot, October Ring‘s sweet little guitar melody being countered by its evil twin sowing dissent and discord), spoken word over free-forming instruments (After The Filmshoot describing either a spiritual experience or very good drugs… or both, @Bomb The Space sounding like a guitar being attacked, Ornery Return Cravings spoken over sheer instrumental chaos), and occasionally, songs too (the stripped-back post-punk glory of Tony Was Here, the slithery, smoky, speakeasy feel of Cafes In Conversation, Inverno creeping in like a fever-dream of The Cramps, and the beautiful, emotionally-charged Paetumokai (Pua pua i te Koanga)). Dave Edwards is a thoughtful and talented writer, composer, and performer. This double album ably demonstrates that, from the soft, delightful guitar ramblings on Stromatolites, to Wealth And Riches that sounds for all the world like a battle to the death between a drumkit and a horde of toy robots.
“He doesn’t seem to so much want to push boundaries, as to act like he’s never heard of boundaries in the first place. At times soft and beautiful, at others dark and jarring, it makes for fascinating listening.” – Peter Malthus, muzic.nz
A track from the Loose Autumn Moans album – originally recorded in 2003, and recently played live for the first time in 20 years!
‘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”
“Wellington, NZ composer Dave Edwards with some able assistance from duo or trio the Winter... Guitars, violin, cello, and percussion all stack up… He’s got a persona that’s all his own.” – George Parsons, Dream Magazine #5
All acoustic, no overdubs, and complete with a string section! Recorded and mixed on analogue equipment, and originally released on cassette in 2003 – new 2020 remaster.
“Edwards‘ art is always an interactive experience, and the spontaneous nature of his audio output encourages descriptions such as abrasive, discordant, sombre and atmospheric. Such adjectives contribute but never tell the whole tale.” – Real Groove
The album is structured as a progression from summer. The cover image shows a NZ pohutukawa tree in flower. It continues through autumn, a time of harvest, preparation, shortening daylight, and the shedding of old dead layers.
It finishes with an extended live version of ‘O Henry Ending‘, recorded at the Winter’s first gig.
“O Henry falling leaves & branches, talk a worried sad refrain
Your eyes half tilt, your brain half mast
To tie the fond anonymous bond beyond yr aching shelter lying walls
That fall to fall, & raise the days, museum haze …”
Dave Edwards (archtop acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocal, lyrics)
Sam Prebble (violin) / Mike Kingston (cello)
Simon Sweetman (percussion)
Recorded in Wellington, NZ, 2003
1. | Summer Skin 06:19 |
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Mouth of the Caveman 03:26
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Loose Autumn Moans is dedicated to Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge), who died in 2014.
Rest easy Sam, and thank you..
Continuing the seasonal theme, Dave Edwards, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman (occasionally joined by Sam Prebble) formed a regular free improvising instrumental trio , the Winter.
“A strange sonic brew that includes dissonant rock textures, rough outsider folk-blues mysteries, electric and acoustic improvisations and a considerable part of tasty feedback. Imagine equal parts Derek Bailey, New Zealand’s Pumice and classic ’60s blues/folk and you’re in the right ballpark.” – The Broken Face
The original C60 cassette release of Loose Autumn Moans included solo interludes recorded the previous year, in 2002. These have since been reissued as a separate album.
By shortening to just the 2003 ensemble sessions, Loose Autumn Moans becomes concise. It emphasises the lyrics, and the jazzy acoustic instrumental interplay.
A different take of ‘O Henry Ending‘ was recorded in Melbourne, Australia in 2005. I had just bought a banjo (which I still have), Mike Kingston played acoustic guitar this time, and Francesca Mountfort took the cello role, along with Cylvi M on percussion.
While much of the album was in a new style, incorporating electronica and field recordings, ‘O Henry Ending’ and the presence of fellow expat kiwis provided a thematic bridge from the Wellington days.
To illustrate how a song can be interpreted in multiple ways, the fiffdimension 25th anniversary 2CD features Mouth of the Caveman – and both the 2005 Melbourne version and a new (2022) a live electric arrangement of O Henry Ending
Three of the Loose Autumn Moans tracks were revived in new solo arrangements for these more recent live albums:
Tracks from Loose Autumn Moans also appear on this compilation, that gives an overview of the early years.
My great-great-grandfather (himself a young man at the time) self-published a book of poems in 19th century Scotland. It includes a piece about Autumn.
Adapting John Collie’s words to music is a current major work-in-progress, that .allows a new ‘mature’ version of my acoustic style, and shows the early works, like Loose Autumn Moans, in a new light!
Dave Edwards solo cassette tracks, in Wellington NZ, 2002.
These solo recordings were originally released as interludes, between the acoustic ensemble pieces in the Loose Autumn Moans (2003) album. But they’re now re-presented separately as a standalone short album (with a different running order and some light remastering).
I wrote the words to the title track in a notebook during the wrap party for a short film I’d worked on – a surrealist description of the evening, based on deliberate mishearings of the conversations around me:
“Taking notes throughout the performance. Humans become worms, with a sameness that is frightening. Politics is bad: we knew this already, but now it’s confirmed. Collapse into laughter.
A cigarette chair from which comes a dictator; everyone in thrall to his conversation. A plastic wooden horse to capture the city – incongruous? Indeed. Expelled all the virtues? You to decide.”
I made the soundscape with electric guitar and a 4-track tape recorder.
The other tracks on the album expanded on this wordy fusion of postpunk singer/songwriter and free improvisation. Radio stations wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
In the early 2000s, I was living in Wellington (New Zealand’s capital, and my birthplace), looking for a way to follow up the almost-success of The Marion Flow (part 2).
But I was moving further away from conventional 3min song formats into the avant-garde.
Although I lived not far from Courtenay Place I was more interested in the scene based around Newtown venue The Space (a precursor to the Pyramid Club), then in its baroque period.
I was an underemployed arts graduate, living in a scody flat doing casual work as a film extra (blink and you’ll miss me in Lord of the Rings) or builder’s labourer, and (trying &) failing to write a novel. Partly due to lack of money, I made my own entertainment.
Although the internet existed in early form, this was before social media – so instead of selfies, oversharing took a more oblique form, filtered through art.
In all, I was a noisy (as opposed to noise) guitar & spoken word footnote to the Wellington free jazz / avant garde music scene.
| 1. | After the Filmshoot (take 1) 03:25 |
| 2. | Interlude: the sociopolitical context 00:51 |
| 3. | Sleep/Grease 02:57 |
| 4. | Etude, for electric saxophone 03:16 |
| 5. | Working Like a Fountain in the Slender Morning Chill 05:11 |
| 6. | Interlude: les paul tapdance 01:36 |
| 7. | After the Filmshoot (take 2) 04:51 |
| 8. | WLAF reprise 03:32 |
The tracks on After the Filmshoot were originally part of
Acoustic songs with a string section, recorded on all-analogue equipment, by Dave Edwards, with Sam Prebble, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman (2003)
Continue reading “After the filmshoot (2002)”– field recordings, electro-acoustic ethnography, Asian industrial soundscapes
by kiwis in South Korea, 2007–2008
Before there was ‘Gangnam Style‘ there was 영통동버스 노래 (Yeongtongdong Bus Song)
Recorded in Suwon and Busan, Republic of Korea, 2007-2008
Dave Black – field recordings, laptop, gayageum, loops, bass, acoustic guitar, vocal
Cylvi M – tangso, shakuhachi, shaker, vocal
The pieces here are made from remixed field recordings of traditional Korean musicians, and instruments such as the gayageum, taepyongso, buddhist chants and samulnori drumming, plus our live version of the folk song ‘Arirang’.
“It’s lo-fi, organic and about as eclectic as one could manage. Kind of reminds me of Nick Cave if he had grown up in Timaru. No pretentious American accents or catch phrase choruses, just a bunch of people making music. A little beauty!” – NZ Musician, August/September 2002
Written by Dave Edwards, and produced by Paul Winstanley,
Featuring Chris O’Connor (drums), Chris Palmer (electric guitars), Simon O’Rorke (percussion), Dean Brown (drums).
Recorded at Thistle Hall, Wellington, 2001, and mixed by Joe Callwood.
The Marion Flow was originally a longer album which spanned recordings from New Plymouth in 1999 and Wellington in 2001.
In 1999, aged 20, I’d left New Plymouth, a large rural town, where I grew up, and moved to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, where I’d been born and where my early pakeha settler ancestors had lived in the 19th century. The Marion Flow reflects this journey, geographically, sonically and spiritually.
“The lights on the city, the barrenness glowed
& behind me the sea as it ebbed & flowed,
Leave the loner alone to go face what he knows
Chained to the flow…” – Seafriends
For the earlier 1999 New Plymouth sessions see The Marion Flow (part 1, Taranaki);
By the time the opportunity arose to finish recording the Marion Flow I’d been thoroughly immersed in the Wellington free jazz and avant-garde music scene, and was very fortunate to have help from some of the top players there. I’d never studied music at school or been in a conventional band, and was out of my depth technically… so working around my limitations became a spark to creativity.
I’ve now reissued the two halves of the album separately – to emphasise the sense of time and place, and stylistic evolution, and to re-present them more concisely for the short-attention-span 21st century.
“Edwards’ music is often a sculpture rather than a melodic composition. Within this chosen form, amongst all the writings rantings & poetry there’s much difficult pleasure to be had for the musically adventurous.” – Brent Cardy, Real Groove, July 2002
| 1. | Seafriends 03:07 Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, vocal Paul Winstanley – fretless bass Chris Palmer – electric guitars Chris O’Connor – drums | |||
| 2. | A Wedding 03:48 Dave Edwards – electric guitar, piano innards, canvas sheet, vocal | |||
| 3. | A Visit to the Beehive 00:45 Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, vocal Simon O’Rorke – drums | |||
| 4. | Monkeys with Typewriters 03:30 Dave Edwards – electric guitar Chris Palmer – electric guitar Simon O’Rorke – percussion | |||
| 5. | Tony Was Here (but they put him on ice) 03:07 Dave Edwards – electric guitar, vocal Chris O’Connor – drums | |||
| 6. | Cafes in Conversation 03:38 Dave Edwards – electric guitar, vocal Paul Winstanley – fretless bass Chris O’Connor – drums | |||
| 7. | The Marion Flow (live at the Space) 09:07 Dave Edwards – electric guitar, harmonica, vocal Dean Brown – drums | |||
| 8. | Seafriends (instrumental mix) 04:05 Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar Paul Winstanley – fretless bass Chris Palmer – electric guitars Chris O’Connor – drums |
Live 4th May 2019, at Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon, in Masterton NZ.
Solo guitar & harmonica version of track http://www.fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/track/summer-skin
Originally recorded in Wellington NZ, September 2003, for the album ‘Loose Autumn Moans‘, with a mini string section of Mike Kingston on cello and Sam Prebble (RIP) on violin. It also appears on the Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 compilation.
4th May 2019 live solo version at the Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon.
This song was originally recorded in June 2001, at Thistle Hall, Wellington. It was the opening track of the album The Marion Flow.
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