South Island Sessions (2006)

Recorded in Nelson, NZ, 2006.

Listen

About

1861 revisited – my pākeha (European) ancestors, John ‘Totara Jack’ and Mary Edwards, arrived in the South Island of New Zealand on board the Olympus and settled in Nelson¹.

John ‘Totara Jack’ Edwards

Nelson, New Zealand

When I lived nearby a century and a half later,

I found the address where they’d lived, just below a spot on a hill that marks the geographical centre of NZ.
I recorded and toured with South Island musicians;
studied at the Nelson School of Music – and finally had the chance to learn some ‘conventional’ technique;
played in Hokitika, Greymouth, Westport, Nelson, Blenheim, Lyttelton and Dunedin
- (as well as Brisbane, Australia²);
and recorded the sound of tui and makomako (native birds) in Nelson Lakes National Park.

The early settler stories marked the start of an interest in genealogy, and prompted the music video for The Ballad of William Knife³ (loosely based on ‘Totara Jack’).

In contrast to the ‘traditional’ South Island NZ ‘Flying Nun‘ or The Dead C inspired sounds, South Island Sessions blended acoustic instruments with field recordings and electronic glitches. I played acoustic guitar, banjo and saxophone, and delegated the electric guitar role to two local players. We named this new genre “Steampunk Folktronica“⁴.

Credits

Dave Black – acoustic guitar (2,6), banjo (3,4,6), drums (4), harmonica (2), laptop, field recordings, tenor saxophone (6,7), and vocals
Cylvi M – vocals & phat beatz (1)
Hayden Gifkins – electric guitar (5,7)
Matthew Thornicroft – electric guitar (5,7)
Damian ‘Frey’ Stewart – no-input mixing desk (3)
Cookie – drums (5, 6)

Recorded in Nelson NZ, 2006

Tracklist

1.	Cylvi M – Bush F***s Dogs 03:20
2.	The Only Ones Who Know the Earth’s Worth 03:26
3.	Lake Rotoiti to Fox Glacier 06:35
4.	gridget K 03:52
5.	End of Daylight Savings 05:15
6.	Bandit Joe on a scraded gat (west coast highway in digital June) 04:36
7.	The Ballad of William Knife 04:58

Further Listening

After Maths & Sciences (2005/06)

South Island Sessions follows on from this double album recorded in Australia – a departure from my earlier Wellington sound and a reinvention as Dave Black. The New South Wales half includes tracks recorded over the new year break in Gosford (north of Sydney), to welcome in 2006.

It includes a 2006 Australian-inspired track played live at the Lines of Flight festival in Dunedin in the South Island.

First Time Around: South Korea (2007/08)

w/ Cylvi M: the following year, a leap out of the south Pacific entirely, and further into the unknown!

Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012

Tracks from South Island Sessions appear on this compilation of tracks from the ‘second phase’ of my career, when I left Wellington and took on new influences from overseas.

Poems & Lyrics by John Collie (1856)

A double album inspired by another branch of my European early settler ancestry – setting John Collie’s 19th century Scottish poetry to music.

ilhas Atlânticas (2021)

A further branch of early European settler ancestry – an instrumental tribute to Manuel Bernard, who came to NZ from Flores island, Portugal.

Footnotes

The Edwards family later moved to the Wellington region – where my other early settler ancestors on my Dad’s side also lived. ↩︎
Two significant gigs in 2006 were solo performances: at the Liquid Architecture festival in Brisbane (my only visit there to date – sadly unrecorded, but thank you nonetheless to Lawrence English); and at Lines of Flight festival in Dunedin.
For the latter, I played a live soundtrack to Australian video footage I’d taken in Queensland – so brought Australia back with me to the South Island.
* ↩︎
We also played another show in the Dunedin Fringe Festival (and in Lyttelton) called The Ballad of William Knife. It made a loss, and was plagued with technical issues, and no known recordings exist, so was my first ‘big budget flop’ – a sobering reality check after the previous year’s success with Ascension Band. Although, the chance to also play at Lines of Flight compensated. ↩︎
This predated the better-known Oamaru steampunk scene by five years. We expanded the concept into a Fringe Festival show ‘Steampunk Folktronica’ at the NZ Film Archive in Wellington in early 2007, but once again no known recordings exist. ↩︎