Portugal – fiffdimension

The live debut of Dave Black & Snake Beings, at the Audio Foundation in Auckland, NZ in 2014; and an epic journey half-way around the world, across Eurasia.

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Two itinerant New Zealanders, playing a soundtrack to travel videos by each, collected over years spent living abroad.

The soundtrack infused noise and free improvisation with field recordings and world music elements.

(Track 4 first appeared on fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/ngumbang-2015;
we met up again a few years later in Fiji, and recorded fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/ruasagavulu-fiji-2020)

credits

released July 10, 2026

Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, sanshin, clarinet, melodica, vocal, field recordings, video
www.fiffdimension.com/ethnomusicology

Emit Snake-Beings – percussion, electronics, duduk, zither, field recordings, video
snakebeings.co.nz

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This track was originally recorded by The Electricka Zoo (2017), and appears on the Other Islands: 2012-2018 compilation. It’s based around a (non-diatonic) Cmaj7 – Amaj7 pattern, with a bossa nova rhythm.

It’s dedicated to my great-great-grandfather Manuel Bernard.

He was born in 1847 in Ponta Delgada, Flores Island, Azores, Portugal.

The words are in (beginner) Portuguese:

Eu gosto de falar

no meus ancestrais

de as ilhas Atlânticas

Madeiras e Açores

Portugal is the westernmost country in Europe, with its back to it geographically and culturally. It was the edge of the known world for Europeans until the Age of Discovery. The Azores islands are even further west.

As a teenager, Manuel Bernard stowed away on a passing American whaling ship.

From a remote island in the Atlantic ocean, he ended up on an equally remote island in the Pacific – on the opposite side of the world, in Wellington, New Zealand.

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