The Troubled Times: Sparkle Tube (2025)

A return to the duo lineup of our earliest recordings (Antony Milton and Dave Edwards).

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CD-R edition

Limited edition physical copies of Sparkle Tube are available from Antony’s Grey Cyphers CDR label, along with other NZ artists including Rain Sleepers, Agentsss, L$D Fundraiser, CJA, Tower of Heaven, and more.

Old school cdr label out of back blocks New Zealand/Aotearoa releasing music by Agentsss and other lo-fi mystic wannabes
Antony Milton

About

Duo outing for The Troubled Times on this disk, ostensibly this is material Dave and Antony recorded while waiting for drummer David to show up for practice. He never showed up…
More of a weird improv noise album this one- except for the ‘musical’ bits..
Kind of dreamy.

(But you know what dreams are like, cruising one minute- terror the next.)

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The Troubled Times: Unsteady Ground (2025)

Latest release from The Troubled Times… weirdly ‘relevant’ this year. And available on cassette.

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A new collection of songs for the Times.
Starting off with a weirdly upbeat track recorded pre- US election the tone drifts somewhat astray as the collection proceeds.

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Trying to find purpose amongst all the doom scrolling.

credits

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Homo Homini Lupus compilation (2025)

The Troubled Times (Antony Milton, Dave Edwards, David Heath) feature on this new compilation by Kentucky-based label Humanhood Recordings.

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Available on limited edition double cassette.

No Maxim But Now

Other artists include KNURL, EMIL BEAULIEAU, COCK ESP, Aaron Rosenblum, Thaniel Ion Lee, Mike Shiflet, Joe Tunis and more…

Tracklist

1.	Straight Panic – Ethik 06:02
2.	See Through Buildings – In This Defeat 07:00
3.	KNURL – The Resulting Deprivation 10:02
4.	EMIL BEAULIEAU – Live At Six Mohonk, Part Two 07:46
5.	COCK ESP – Miami Advice Remix 01:18
6.	Takeshita – For All His Boys Locked In a Fucking Cell 10:00
7.	LACKTHROW – Saturday 225 pm jan 25 2025 09:56
8.	Rudolf Eb.er – Red wine on sweaty women’s soles (Rotwein auf verschwitzten Frauensohlen) 10:00
9.	156 – Sleeping With A Clear Conscience 05:59
10.	Aaron Rosenblum – Mother Day 03:02
11.	ILLUSION OF SAFETY – Fahrenheit 451 06:01
12.	Nicholas Maloney – Cast/Current 07:05
13.	Thaniel Ion Lee – Trapazoid 03:04
14.	Mike Shiflet – White Grass 05:34
15.	Walter Campbell – Xenophobe 04:18
16.	Nathaniel Hendrickson and Douglas Lucas – Blue Stream 01:10
17.	Joe+N – Study #1 01:53
18.	{AN} Eel – Plodding Subtextual 05:58
19.	The Troubled Times – No Maxim But Now 09:53
20.	Sycamore Willow – Spider In The Basement 04:57
21.	Limestone Ziggurat – Black Atlas 09:45

The Troubled Times: dDA (2025)

The Troubled Times‘ first recording session of 2025.

Dave on guitar and Antony on bass this time – a role reversal from our usual instruments – resulted in a distinctly different flavoured improv… a frenetic scratchiness.

Credits

David Heath – drums (2-7), bass (8)
Dave Edwards – electric guitars, harmonica (6)
Antony Milton – bass (1-7), vocal (6), drums (8)

Recorded 20 January 2025, in Masterton, Aotearoa/NZ

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7″ singles

2x new 7″ lathe cut singles:

Jovial Blade / Extant Body & Weight

“Some seriously scrambled dissonance. 80’s vocals hits 60’s electro/cut-up nonsense whilst smothering an ever mutating bassline […] the track contains more musical ideas in its 5 mins than some exhibit in some musical careers.” – Simon Baker, What Lies Beneath

(Dave solo – A-side is bass & electronics, B-side is clarinet & electronics)

and

The Troubled Times: Cellophane

Discs manufactured in NZ by Johnny Electric

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The Troubled Times: The Latest Poll

Available on cassette or download –

The Latest Poll is the debut release for the new Troubled Times Tapes imprint, which will be releasing music by, and associated with, The Troubled Times.

A rare session out of Antony Milton‘s garage and into his lounge due to the frigid winter conditions. Also a departure from our usual psychedelic garage rock sound – we left our regular instruments behind and played mainly what was at hand, resulting in completely different sonic textures:

Antony Milton played casio keyboard, banjo and contact mic’d nylon-string guitar through his home stereo,
Dave Edwards played steel-string acoustic guitar, banjo and clarinet through his effect rig into a tiny busking amp, and
David Heath played Dave’s cheap toy electronic drum kit.

The result is a freakish free-folk psychedelic synth pop shambles that also somehow creates a comfy abode, a shelter from the stormy stormy night.

credits

released June 13, 2024

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The Troubled Times: Another (****ing) Sunday

The first physical CD by The Troubled Times (Antony Milton, Dave Edwards, David Heath),

Fizzy dreamy shambolic ramblings from the Wairarapa‘s dustiest garage.
Instant songs committed to disk for posterity.

‘Another Sunday’ CD series

This was the first chapter in Antony Milton’s acclaimed ‘Another Sunday‘ series of CDs:
anothersunday.bandcamp.com – different artists, each making an album with the same title.

Other discs in the series include Michael Morley, Greymouth, Seht, Teen Haters, Perpets, and Sunset Temples

video

credits

released August 1, 2023

David Heath- drums
Dave Edwards– bass
Antony Milton– guitar/vocals, video, CD producer

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The Troubled Times: live at Common Ground 15/07/23

Thank you everyone who came to The Troubled Times‘ live debut, in Featherston NZ

Live @Common Ground,
Featherston NZ, 15/7/23

Antony Milton – guitar David Heath – drums Dave Edwards – bass

Mānawatia a Matariki!

Thanks also to Zac and Holly Winterwood,

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w/ James Robinson – Negentropic Diatribes (2022)

Multimedia spoken word and music collaboration between two unique NZ artists:

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About

James Robinson is a mid career contemporary New Zealand mixed media artist, exhibiting widely since 1989 – www.jamesrobinson.nz

fiffdimension is music and multimedia by Dave Edwards (aka Dave Black) and collaborators, since 1998 – www.fiffdimension.com

We met in the early 2000s, and finally collaborated 20 years on. Negentropic Diatribes was recorded in Otago in 2022, as James used spoken word recordings to discuss his creative process and innermost thoughts.

The musical settings were created by Dave in Featherston – plus contributions from other collaborators.

credits

James Robinson – words, voice, paintings & drawings, bell drum
Dave Edwards – electric guitar, bass, loops (2,6,9), midi (9,13), ukulele (11), harmonica (14)

with

Antony Milton – electric guitar (4)
David Heath – drums (4)
Dr Emit Snake-Beings – percussion (5), keyboard (11)
Jody Lloyd – beats and mixing (12)
Nathan Palmer – electric guitar, thumb piano, jaw harp, banjo, and synth (14)
‐‐——-

Tracklist

1.	Telescopic Misanthropy (take 1) 02:10
2.	Tendrils of Glowing Memory Filaments 04:31
3.	Nothing Can be Threatened by Nothing 04:19
4.	James Robinson + The Troubled Times – The Edge 03:25
5.	James Robinson + snakebeings + fiffdimension – Dialogue with the Divine 05:30
6.	Well Done Son! 00:54
7.	Old Brain (metadada of Oceania remembering) 06:19
8.	James Robinson – Is Not Art 03:29
9.	Existential Threat 01:02
10.	Got Razed 07:34
11.	James Robinson + snakebeings + fiffdimension – That which is itself nature 05:00
12.	James Robinson + Trillion – Bath poem 10:31
13.	Psychocultural Glossalalia 01:39
14.	James Robinson + Nat da Hatt + fiffdimension – Ake Ake Amene 18:20

James Robinson

James won 2007 paramount prize in the wallace award for
” Taniwaha dragon mother ( spirit bones)”

‘… a great big flatulent belch of fresh air amongst all the tight-sphinctered, deodorised boys and girls of the accepted national art world….. off-kilter and threatening but always sumptuously, gloriously beautiful.’
– Chris Knox.

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