“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
Produced by Paul Winstanley, & featuring Steve Duffels, the Digitator, the Dadapapa Magickclone Orchestra and more. Recorded at the TFC Lounge, New Plymouth, 1999 – with special thanks to Brian Wafer.
The Marion Flow is a pre-millennial fusion of warm acoustic pop, spoken word and postpunk discord.. An almost-acknowledged New Zealand classic from Taranaki – of its time (the ’90s!) yet timeless.
In 1999, aged 20, I left New Plymouth, a large rural town, where I grew up, and moved to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, where I was born. The Marion Flow reflects this journey, geographically, sonically and spiritually.
The Marion Flow was originally a longer album spanning recordings from New Plymouth in 1999 and Wellington in 2001. I’ve now reissued the two halves separately – to emphasise the sense of time and place, and stylistic evolution, and to re-present each more concisely for the short-attention-span 21st century.
This page is for the 1999 New Plymouth sessions;
- for the 2001 Wellington followup recordings see The Marion Flow (part 2);
Further listening
- If you enjoy the avant-garde sound of the last track, try the companion album DDPP: Waiting For the Drummer – recorded at the same sessions in New Plymouth in 1999 with the same personnel;
- for my raw live solo punk sound at the time try Live 1999
- for an overview of this whole period, featuring selected tracks from all the above albums and more, try Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005.
- and for a years-later (2017) postpunk/electronica reunion with the Digitator (who I’d met in high school), try The Electricka Zoo
“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
Tracklist
1 On a Bus
Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, vocal
Paul Winstanley – turntable
3-chord minimalism (progression played that way for 4mins straight, not looped), to evoke the tedium of a long bus ride, complete with crying kids.
2 Banana Wizard
Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, vocal
Paul Winstanley – fretless bass
Steve Duffels – drums
My first and probably only pop hit, which actually got a bit of bFM radio airplay at the time. Originally titled ‘Dope Smoking and Wizard’, after a character in the rarely-heard third verse, which I omitted to keep it to 3 minutes, and later retitled ‘Banana Wizard’ after the banana he was peeling; I’d grown tired of irrelevant drug-reference notoriety overshadowing my wider catalogue.
3 Locked Without March
Dave Edwards – upturned acoustic guitar, vocal
Paul Winstanley – screwdrivers
Beat poetry… a noisier electric version appears on Live 1999
4 Chairs to Tie the Revolution Down
Dave Edwards – electric guitar, vocal
Mariachi without the trumpets
5 The Marion Flow
Dave Edwards – electric guitars, vocal
Paul Winstanley – cymbal and pitch-shifter
A personal favourite, a one-chord wonder… funnily it never even occurred to me til years later that Marion is a girl’s name.
6 Open the Dogs
Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocal
Paul Winstanley – fretless bass
The Digitator – snare drum & foliage
Not about animal cruelty
7 Phoenix Road
Dave Edwards – electric guitar, harmonica, vocal
Paul Winstanley – fretless bass
An alt-country black comedy
8 Lucifer Directing Traffic (at 3am)
Dave Edwards – electric guitar, vocal
Paul Winstanley – turntable
Paul Winther – analogue synth
The Digitator – acoustic guitar
He’d had a few… this piece leads in to DDPP: Waiting For the Drummer – recorded at the same sessions in New Plymouth in 1999 with the same personnel:
fiffdimension 
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