Articulation Incommunicate (2004)

Previously unreleased! 

Dave Edwards dictaphone cassette recordings 2004, for spoken word and improvised guitar – a trip down a road not taken for New Zealand music.

These tracks were primitively recorded, not just obscure but completely unheard by anyone else, and seemed like raw unfinished demos at the time – but in hindsight may be the culmination of my 1997-2005 early period (a fusion of original songs, spoken word and free improv).

By 2004 my style was wordy, dense with allusions, and deliberately flouted not only verse/chorus structures but grammatical convention in parts; the influences here were literary modernists as much as music – eg  Joyce, Beckett, Burroughs, Pynchon, Dylan (Thomas), and New Zealand poets James K Baxter, Alan Brunton and Hone Tuwhare. I was a postgrad journalism student that year, so partly it was spare time relief from the constraints of non-fiction writing.

My guitar heroes included British free improviser Derek Bailey and my Mississippi bluesman namesake David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards – and fellow explorers in the New Zealand underground music scene.

The album is rounded out by an abrasive noise guitar, dictaphone and electric razor performance at the Bomb the Space Festival (the youtube clip is one of my few music videos to have over a thousand views… go figure),

and a pair of free improvisations, with percussionists Simon O’Rorke and Simon Sweetman, and Korean bassist Youjae Lee.

Next, needing a change of scenery, having pushed the singer/songwriter envelope as far as I could, and following some last ensemble collaborations with Ascension Band,

and The Winter

the next year I left the country on my OE and took a different approach again….

Further Listening:

Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005

vol1 – a compilation of songs, spoken word and instrumental improvisations from the early phase of my gloriously unsuccessful career, by Dave Edwards with The Winter, Ascension Band, plus Chris O’Connor, Paul Winstanley, Simon O’Rorke, Chris Palmer, Sam Prebble, Francesca Mountfort and more

“Rough outsider folk-blues mysteries, dissonant rock textures, electric and acoustic improvisations… Edwards strikes me as one of the most overlooked musicians from the fertile lands of New Zealand and if you need a fresh start this might very well be the place.” – The Broken Face

After Maths & Sciences

What came next… an Australian novel for the ear, recorded in Melbourne VIC, and Sydney and Gosford NSW, by Dave Black with Cylvi M, Mike Kingston and Francesca Mountfort (2005-2006)

“There are New Zealand artists working in this medium (Montano, Seht, Audible 3) combining concrete poetry, field recordings, found-sounds and electro-acoustic manipulations to sit as aural wallpaper, but Dave Black’s debut release (and a re-birth, if you like, for David Edwards) is an actual document – as much a post-modern piece of Performance Journalism as it is a static batch of “songs” or tracks. After Maths & Sciences is a pleasing challenge of an album. It lives up to the cliché of presenting something new with each listen,”– Simon Sweetman