Celebrating 25 years of fiffdimension!
Electric (yang) / Acoustic (yin)
A collection of short tracks by Dave Edwards and collaborators.
“Double disc collection of more than two decades’ worth of live and studio-recorded tunes by Dave Edwards, who you may have heard recently as part of The Troubled Times with Antony Milton. It’s quite a diverse listen!
“You get some concise and catchy pop songs, some full-on rockers, banjo excursions, improv freak-out, poetry, acoustic blues, folk songs, scrambled noise… there’s something here for everybody. A good intro to Dave’s dauntingly deep discography.”
– Howard Stelzer, Noisy Bandcamp.
Produced by Antony Milton; and features Paul Winstanley, Chris O’Connor, Simon O’Rorke,Chris Palmer, Sam Prebble, Mike Kingston, Francesca Mountfort, Damian Stewart, Emit Snake-Beings, Nat da Hatt, Steve Duffels, and Oscar (the dog).
2CD double album. 35 tracks spanning 25 years. Comes in gatefold card case with full colour photography by Jechtography and James Gilberd. Includes download of the digital album.
Review
“Electric (Yang)/Acoustic (Yin) boasts some wildly different tracks; short instrumentals (the guitar and percussion of King Street Boogie, the piano and birdsong of Tui and Grey Sky, the guitar, rain, and bucket- possibly oboe too- of Classical Rain Bucket), song-length instrumentals (the gorgeous and floaty Kalbarri Coastline, the spaced-out psychedelia of Shuffling The Tarot, October Ring‘s sweet little guitar melody being countered by its evil twin sowing dissent and discord), spoken word over free-forming instruments (After The Filmshoot describing either a spiritual experience or very good drugs… or both, @Bomb The Space sounding like a guitar being attacked, Ornery Return Cravings spoken over sheer instrumental chaos), and occasionally, songs too (the stripped-back post-punk glory of Tony Was Here, the slithery, smoky, speakeasy feel of Cafes In Conversation, Inverno creeping in like a fever-dream of The Cramps, and the beautiful, emotionally-charged Paetumokai (Pua pua i te Koanga)). Dave Edwards is a thoughtful and talented writer, composer, and performer. This double album ably demonstrates that, from the soft, delightful guitar ramblings on Stromatolites, to Wealth And Riches that sounds for all the world like a battle to the death between a drumkit and a horde of toy robots.
“He doesn’t seem to so much want to push boundaries, as to act like he’s never heard of boundaries in the first place. At times soft and beautiful, at others dark and jarring, it makes for fascinating listening.” – Peter Malthus, muzic.nz
The 2CD compilation focuses on Dave Edwards’ guitar and banjo compositions in New Zealand and Australia, their acoustic/electric duality, and boils down a quarter-century of restless creativity to two concise discs.
Electric (yang)
| 1. | King Street Boogie (1998) 01:07 |
| 2. | The Marion Flow (live at the Space, 2000) 03:02 |
| 3. | Monkeys with Typewriters (2000) 01:22 |
| 4. | Tony Was Here (2001) 03:01 |
| 5. | Cafes in Conversation (2001) 03:26 |
| 6. | After the Filmshoot (2002) 03:25 |
| 7. | @Bomb the Space (Live at Happy, 2004) 02:48 |
| 8. | Wealth & Riches (2005) 03:49 |
| 9. | Lake Rotoiti to Fox Glacier (2006) 04:39 |
| 10. | Stromatolites (2013) 01:51 |
| 11. | snakebeings + Nat da Hatt + fiffdimension – Huia Vortex (2015) 02:28 |
| 12. | The Electricka Zoo – Inverno (live at Esc Velocity, 2018) 02:33 |
| 13. | Abbadeadbe (2020) 01:39 |
| 14. | October Ring (2020) 03:37 |
| 15. | Ilhas Atlânticas (2021) 02:16 |
| 16. | Shuffling the Tarot (2022) 03:18 |
| 17. | O Henry Ending (live at the Miracle Room, 2022) 07:09 |
Acoustic (yin)
Further listening
The compilations feature tracks from the albums
- Scratched Surface (1998)
- The Marion Flow (1999 / 2001)
- After the Filmshoot (2002)
- Mantis Shaped and Worrying (2002)
- Loose Autumn Moans (2003)
- Articulation Incommunicate (2004)
- After Maths & Sciences (2005)
- South Island Sessions (2006)
- in a Wildflower State (2013)
- Ngumbang (2015)
- Escape Velocity: Live 2018
- Live 2019
- Glimpses of Utopia (2020)
- Spastic Rhythms ’22 (2022)
- Aguas Brilhantes (2022)
…note, that’s not the entire fiffdimension catalogue! The 2CD excludes collaborations by regular (The Winter, The Troubled Times) or large ensembles (Ascension Band, Gamelan Padhang Moncar), other composers (Poems & Lyrics by John Collie), and ethnomusicological field recordings from outside Australasia (First Time Around).
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