New Zealand
Scotland, postponed
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Around this time (September 2020) I’d planned to travel to Scotland, on my first visit. There was to be a family gathering for my sister’s wedding in Edinburgh.
The trip’s now postponed indefinitely, for obvious reasons
The idea was to visit Boyndie, Banffshire, where my great-great-grandfather John Collie grew up.
In 1856, in his early 20s he published a book : Poems and Lyrics (in the English and Scotch Dialects).
I‘ve started setting some of it to music.
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.
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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.
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- Youjae Lee
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- Simon Sweetman
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- Simon O’Rorke
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….
Read the rest of this entry »
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
Featuring
Sam Prebble (violin)
Mike Kingston (cello)
and Simon Sweetman on percussion.
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Loose Autumn Moans consists of five acoustic ensemble tracks:
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Summer Skin 06:20
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Mouth of the Caveman 03:26
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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. These are now available separately as
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.
Loose 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‘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
After the filmshoot (2002)
Dave Edwards solo cassette tracks, in Wellington NZ, 2002.
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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:
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Sleep/Grease 02:57
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WLAF reprise 03:32
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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.
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’
Solitude
Written in 1856, but timely perhaps?
This poem is the first of 44 pieces in the book Poems & Lyric by John Collie.
It was written by my great-great-grandfather in Scotland. 164 years later, living in 21st century coronavirus lockdown NZ, we’ve all had to bring back solitude. Creating music’s become a solitary pursuit again (or else a virtual one). Adapting this poem gave the chance for a 12-minute acoustic epic whose time had come (again).
lyrics
OH give me near some swelling stream to stray, 0r tread the windings of some pathless wood, For I am wearied of the bustling day, And long to meet thee, gloomy Solitude: That I with thee may climb those shelfy steeps, Which frown majestic o’er the boiling deeps. Read the rest of this entry »
Sonnet on Summer
from Poems & Lyrics by John Collie (1856)
Clever Hansel – ukulele vocal
Dave Edwards – guitar, harmonica, vocal
THE sweet breath of summer blows fresh o’er each plain,
The woods have resumed their lost grandeur again;
By fountain and streamlet the wild flowers are springing.
And the breath of the heather bell sweetens the breeze,
And the old stormy ocean lies slumbering in peace;
And the wild bees are humming around the wild flowers,
Afar above earth the lark proudly soars;
The bleat of the lamb on the moss-cover’d hill,
The sound of the shepherd’s pipe jocund and shrill,
All tell in a language most striking and plain,
T hat summer, fair summer, is reigning again,
The old face of nature her smiles has put on,
And the blustery appearance of winter has flown.
Fiji 1976, by Alastair Edwards
Film footage by my father, Alastair Edwards, in Nadi and around Viti Levu in 1976.
It’s from a couple of years before I was born.
There was no sound, so I’ve added a soundtrack from Ruasagavulu, which Dr Emit Snake-Beings and I recorded in Suva decades later.
My Dad’s interest in film (then video) and photography was one of the key influences on my own travel and videomaking. He was doing this long before youtube or instagram!
I miss you Dad…
16 February @ Fernside Gardens Open Days
I played solo acoustic at the Fernside Gardens Open Day on Sunday 16th February, 11am.
Huia Vortex
Animated visuals, with electric guitar loops, one-stringed bass, and drums – the opening track from the ‘Ngumbang‘ album (get the free download) – w/ Emit Snake-beings & Nat da Hatt
The title ‘Huia Vortex’ refers to the location where the track was recorded, in Huia, a small village on the outskirts of west Auckland.
It’s not necessarily related to ‘Swansong (for the Huia)‘ (2004), the second album by The Winter, an electro-acoustic trio improvisation in tribute to the extinct New Zealand bird the huia by Dave Edwards, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman. Its 19-minute final track remains an underrated fiffdimension epic. [send us your review]
