fiffdimension is an umbrella label for audiovisual projects by Dave Edwards (aka Dave Black), solo or with various collaborators. It was originally a nickname from high school.
I was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and grew up in New Plymouth, near the sleeping volcano Mt Taranaki, rolling green hills, and black sand beaches with surf pounding on the shore of the Tasman.I started out writing songs as a teenager and have self-released several albums combining folk, rock, avant-garde, free-improv and spoken word elements. I tend to record as ‘Dave Edwards‘ for the inward-looking singer-songwriter and live improvisation aspects of my music.
I self-released my first album Scratched Surface on CDR in 1998.
From these folk/punk beginnings I moved back to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, where my style continued to evolve into the more complex/impressionistic/visionary approach of The Marion Flow, Mantis Shaped and Worrying, and Loose Autumn Moans.
These combined songwriting with an interest in free jazz and poetic modernism, which, along with my rudimentary conventional musicianship and love of dissonance, and the influence of the local avant-garde scene… meant I had zero commercial chance.
Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005
Next, finding lyrics harder to write as I got older (and also not wanting to repeat myself or to be pigeonholed), I mostly left the solo singer/songwriter genre and reinvented myself with a more collaborative and mainly instrumental approach in The Winter and Ascension Band.
Since then I’ve travelled, taken up the banjo, and branched out further, into video-making and ethnomusicology. From 2005 to 2014 I mostly lived overseas, first in Melbourne, Australia, then Busan, South Korea, then Okinawa, Japan, then Perth, Australia (with side trips to Indonesia), and reinvented myself once again as Dave Black.
I use my alter ego Dave Black for my harder-to-categorise non-linear outward-focussed projects since 2005. These incorporate field recordings and world music influences, and include albums such as After Maths & Sciences, South Island Sessions, First Time Around: East Asia, ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes, and Ngumbang.
Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2013
Since 2015 I’m back in NZ. Recent projects include:
Most of this music is not just a solo effort. I’ve also worked with a range of talented collaborators including (in no particular order) the Digitator, Mike Kingston, Paul Winstanley, Simon Sweetman, Nat da Hatt, Hayden Gifkins, Nigel Paterson, Cylvi Manthyng, Simon O’Rorke, Francesca Mountfort, Jeff Henderson, Blair Latham, Snake Beings, Sam Prebble, Chris Palmer, Chris O’Connor, the Unknown Rockstar, Gareth Farr & Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, Gamelan Padhang Moncar, Antony Milton, Frey, and more…
The bulk of the music is available for free downloads, and I hope you enjoy the ethnomusicological field studies and other assorted adventures shown in the videos.
This site is an online compendium of music and video projects, currently sprawled across the internet on sites like youtube, last.fm, myspace, reverbnation, jamendo and so on. It’s also interactive – please drop me a line and let me know which parts you’d like to see, hear and read more of. Thanks also for visiting!
10/01/2015 at 2:15 am
hello,
found the name of Totara Jack claimed as you ancestor, curious ” who are you, how are you related to him????
My name is Andrew McEwen, farming in the Manawatu, Totara Jack belongs to my Mums’s family tree, he was my 2nd Great Grandfather, he had a son Thomas Edwards, who also had a son Leonard Edward Edwards, who was my granddad on my mum’s side, her dad.
Just curious, because seen you got some old photos in your collage, of Totara jack, his son Thomas Edward and his wife Philadelphia Benge, who are some of the others in the photos?? Cheers Andrew