2020s Psychedelic garage rock trio: Antony Milton (guitar & keyboards), Dave Edwards (bass & guitar), and David Heath (drums) – in Masterton, New Zealand.
Jump to 2025 – 2024 –2023 – 2022 –2021 – prehistory
2026
Twig Bed Balance
The Troubled Times are back with perhaps their ‘dustiest’ session yet…. Murky drones, percussive clatter and spasms of edgy delay soaked bliss.
In The Golden – A Selection Of Wairarapa Underground Recordings 1988-2026
The Troubled Times, and other projects featuring all three members, appear on this compilation of the Wairarapa scene, curated by Antony Milton.
2025
Smudge
‘Lounge music’ – nutso falling over kind of wonkiness from mid-winter.
Sparkle Tube
A return to the duo lineup of our earliest recordings (Antony Milton and Dave Edwards).
Available on CDR – 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
Unsteady Ground
A new collection of songs for the Times, starting off with a weirdly upbeat track recorded pre- US election – the tone drifts somewhat astray as the collection proceeds.
Available on cassette – 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
No Maxim But Now
The Troubled Times feature on the new compilation Homo Homini Lupus, by Kentucky-based label Humanhood Recordings.
ddA
Our first recording session of the year, on 20 January – an instrumental role reversal, this time with Dave on guitar and Antony on bass… probably our least representative album as a result!
2024
Live at the Pyramid Club – Wellington, NZ – 28 September
two new albums, available on cassette:
Boa
Available on cassette -🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
” a new album dominated by the squeals of tortured amps and seriously tormented drums […] the poor bloody neighbours” – Antony Milton
The Latest Poll
Available on cassette – 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
Available on cassette, The Latest Poll is the debut release for the new Troubled Times Tapes imprint, and a departure from our psychedelic garage rock sound into freeform noise/folk.
Cellophane (7″ single)
7″ sold out -🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
Radio Dolby 89.6FM interview
Dave explained the origins of the band:
🎧 Listen / free download on Bandcamp
The Margins: 21/04/24
An even more avant-garde side project: Antony and Dave with free improv legend Simon O’Rorke – music from The Margins!
2023
Another F***ing Sunday
Available on CD! – 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
Fizzy dreamy shambolic ramblings from the Wairarapa’s dustiest garage.
Instant songs committed to disk for posterity.
Elevate
Avant-jazz meets squealing rambunctious noise – a contrasting companion piece to the ‘Another Sunday’ CD –
Sun Son Sum
For the third year in a row, we had a recording session on the first day of daylight savings – a short session of spaced out noisy psychedelic ‘rock jams’ this time.
Live in Featherston
Our live debut, at Common Ground in Featherston NZ:
Hill Road in Winter
Available on cassette -🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp
“a loud and noisy nocturnal romp through the hills and onto the gravel back roads of one of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s least visited regions. All recorded ‘New Zealand style’ in [my] garage.”
Antony Milton
2022
A Second Sun
Exactly one year on from our first recording session, now with drums.
State Highway 2
First recordings by the new trio, pieces evoking the Wairarapa landscapes.
and guest appearances on
| (the otherwise acoustic) Poems & Lyrics by John Collie (1856) – with an electric swamp blues arrangement of The Dying Monarch; | Negentropic Diatribes, a spoken word album by award-winning painter James Robinson; |
| 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp | 🎧 Listen / buy on Bandcamp |
The Troubled Times also appear on fiffdimension vol4 águas brilhantes: 2018-2022
2021
Started as a duo of Antony Milton and Dave Edwards in Masterton, NZ
“They realy inform n deepen each other – James Robinson
Prehistory: 2003–2004
Antony Milton and Dave Edwards first crossed paths in Wellington, in the early 2000s.
Antony released the Winter‘s debut album Parataxes on CDR on his PseudoArcana label in 2003,
and played electric violin in the 2004 lineup of Ascension Band.
fiffdimension 