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.

Bomb the Space Festival, Wellington NZ, 2004

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….

Continue reading “Articulation Incommunicate (2004)” →

Loose Autumn Moans (2003)

“Wellington, NZ composer Dave Edwards with some able assistance from duo or trio the Winter... Guitars, violin, cello, and percussion all stack up… He’s got a persona that’s all his own.”

– George Parsons, Dream Magazine #5

All acoustic, with a string section, recorded and mixed on analogue equipment, and originally released on cassette in 2003 – new 2020 remaster.

Featuring

Sam Prebble (violin)

Mike Kingston (cello)

and Simon Sweetman on percussion.

simon w newspaper

Bats Theatre, Wellington NZ 2003

Sam Prebble RIP, 2014

Loose Autumn Moans is dedicated to Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge), who died in 2014.

Further listening

Loose Autumn Moans consists of five acoustic ensemble tracks:

	1.	Summer Skin 06:20
	2.	Mouth of the Caveman 03:26
	3.	Redressing Depression Regression 06:02
	4.	The Hurricane Wrangle (Live at Bats Theatre) 07:22
	5.	The Winter – O Henry Ending (Live at Photospace Gallery) 12:46

The album is structured as a progression from summer (with a NZ pohutukawa tree in flower on the cover) through autumn – a time of harvest, preparation, shortening daylight, and the shedding of old dead layers – and finishes with an extended live version of ‘O Henry Ending’, recorded at the Winter’s first gig.

The original C60 cassette (and later online) release included solo interludes recorded in 2002. The collaboration with these guys followed on from

After the Filmshoot (2002)

By focusing on the 2003 sessions Loose Autumn Moans becomes concise, emphasising the lyrics and the jazzy acoustic instrumental interplay – a mini orchestra to bring colour.

oose Autumn Moans is dedicated to Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge), who died in 2014.

Further listening

The collaboration with these guys followed on from

The Winter: Parataxes

The Winter live at Photospace Gallery, July 2003 (photo by James Gilberd)

The Winter‘s debut: electric and acoustic trio improvisations for guitars, cello and percussion, by Dave Edwards, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman (2003)

“A strange sonic brew that includes dissonant rock textures, rough outsider folk-blues mysteries, electric and acoustic improvisations and a considerable part of tasty feedback. Imagine equal parts Derek Bailey, New Zealand’s Pumice and classic ’60s blues/folk and you’re in the right ballpark.” – The Broken Face

Continue reading “Loose Autumn Moans (2003)” →

After the filmshoot (2002)

Dave Edwards solo cassette tracks, in Wellington NZ, 2002.

Hey so the new (2020) album Ruasagavulu is out!

(go there, like, share etc)…

& in the meantime, until the next new project, here’s one from the vault:

	1.	After the Filmshoot (take 1) 03:25
	2.	Interlude: the sociopolitical context 00:51
	3.	Sleep/Grease 02:57
	4.	Etude, for electric saxophone 03:16
	5.	Working Like a Fountain in the Slender Morning Chill 05:11
	6.	Interlude: les paul tapdance 01:36
	7.	After the Filmshoot (take 2) 04:51
	8.	WLAF reprise 03:32

In 2002, a year whose digits are an anagram of this one’s, I was living in Wellington (New Zealand’s capital, and my birthplace), looking for a way to follow up the almost-success of The Marion Flow (part 2).

But I was moving further away from conventional 3min song formats into the avant-garde.

This is the second largely solo album I made in 2002.

Continue reading “After the filmshoot (2002)” →

Psi-solation

‘Solitude‘ appears on this new compilation of lockdown sounds from around the world, curated by Campbell Kneale …

(who I collaborated with in 2018… the full length version of ‘a ton of feathers’ is coming later this year)

Psi-solation has 119 tracks, you can pay what you want, and it wins album of the year by default!

Dearest fellow music-hounds and shut-aways, CELEBRATE PSI PHENOMENON proudly presents…

‘PSI-SOLATION: A GLOBAL COMPILATION OF MUSIC MADE IN LOCKDOWN’

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2002: self-isolation before it was cool?

The difficult third album – recorded during a time of intense introspection in 2002. I locked myself in my room in Wellington for all of November with an analogue 4-track cassette recorder.The results rapidly put an end to my promising New Zealand music career!

In 2002, a year whose digits are an anagram of this one’s, I locked myself in my room for a month of self-isolation.

It had nothing to do with a pandemic!

Kia kaha Aotearoa…

It was just me living in Wellington and looking for a way to follow up The Marion Flow (part 2).

I was moving further away from conventional 3min song formats into the avant-garde. Continue reading “2002: self-isolation before it was cool?” →

Ruasagavulu – with Snake Beings in Fiji

Made in Suva, Fiji – the new album by Dave Black & Dr Emit Snake-Beings

“So easy to get totally lost in this music, recommend for helping with your inner peace” – Andi Verse

Indo-Fijian inspired tropical devotional avant-garde instrumentals for keyboards, ukulele, dholak, duduk, harmonicas, DIY kitchen gamelan, and video.

This was one of the last in-person international collaborations from before the world ended.

The title ‘ruasagavulu’ means ‘twenty’ in Fijian, to kick off the new decade.

recorded in Suva, Fiji, 2nd November 2019

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Further listening

Our first duo recording was ‘Ngumbang‘ (2015) –

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in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (part 2, 2014)

A few years ago I wrote a chapter of Jazz Aotearoa, a book about New Zealand jazz music history, discussing the free improvisation and avant-garde jazz scene in Wellington at the turn of the millennium.

in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway is a collection of improvised instrumental music with some of the musicians in that scene, from the point of view of my own attempts as an untrained outsider to fit in with these advanced jazz players.

with

Simon O’Rorke – synthesisers

Blair Latham – bass clarinet
Julie Bevan – acoustic guitar
Michael Hall – alto sax
Chris Prosser – violin
Dave Edwards – bass, electronics, tenor sax (8)

These sessions were recorded in 2014. I’d just returned from living overseas, 15 years after my first exposure to Wellington free jazz.

The first volume was recorded in Wellington in 1999

Continue reading “in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (part 2, 2014)” →

interview by Nikki King

Live 2019 includes a post-gig interview with Dave Edwards by Nikki King.

We discussed the origins of fiffdimension (including where the name comes from), 19th century ancestors, life in the Wairarapa, and various projects, collaborators, and influences from New Zealand and abroad.

Nikki is the vocalist and trumpeter for Wairarapa postpunk band Spank, who also performed a set in the Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon that day.

Live 2019

An acoustic solo set, live at Wairarapa TV in Masterton, New Zealand

– which took place live on the internet. This was simulcast on Freeview CH41, ArrowFM 89.7FM and YouTube.

The set was part of the Property Law Service May Music Marathon – 12 straight hours of live Music to Television screens during NZ Music Month on May the 4th 2019.

Living in a small town I don’t get to as many gigs as I used to… so here using 21st century technology to play ‘virtually’ everywhere.

On the other hand musically this was closer to a traditional folk/singer-songwriter set than I’d done for quite a while, eschewing dissonant improv, multitracking, live backing musicians or electronic trickery.

I kept my half hour minimal and acoustic (the discord and electric noise I’m saving for another time soon) and updated my past – with

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Nat da Hatt – Harpsychord

The latest offering from Nat da Hatt, recorded in 2015-2016 in Kawaguchi City, Japan using an array of instruments, devices and machines including: a Zoom digital eight track recorder, A Gretsch Electromatic guitar and a Korg vocoder.

Harpsychord follows hot on the heels of 2015’s Volume V and Kleptomania

and his previous 2012 solo masterpiece, Twango

Nat da Hatt is a political refugee from New Zealand who has settled in Japan where he spends his days in a cave creating tone paintings on an array of devices and instruments including: guitar, thumb piano and a Korg vocoder.