1856 to 2026 – DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
Around 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
I’d planned 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‘ includes an abrasive electric guitar, dictaphone and electric razor performance at the Bomb the Space Festival 2004. This is my earliest extant gig footage, and one of my very few music videos to have over a thousand views. Go figure!
Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, harmonica, dictaphone, electronics, electric guitar (11-12), violin (13), vocal & lyrics
with
Perhaps the most lo-fi fiffdimension album of all. These tracks were primitively recorded on a cassette dictaphone; based on words scribbled in notebooks; unmelodic; unheard by anyone else at all (until their release in 2020); and seemed like unfinished demos at the time…
… but in hindsight may represent the culmination of my early period (a lo-fi postpunk fusion of songs, spoken word and free improv – www.fiffdimension.com/1997-2005).
Continue reading “Articulation Incommunicate (2004)”“Emptying out of yr nautical caveman comfort / programming lines in size laden torridness hill upon plains / dense foreclosure and venomous worry / salute me and line / burrow tunnel and moth / soon I taste the next pavement / I invent to cause home”
“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, no overdubs, and complete with a string section! Recorded and mixed on analogue equipment, and originally released on cassette in 2003 – new 2020 remaster.
“Edwards‘ art is always an interactive experience, and the spontaneous nature of his audio output encourages descriptions such as abrasive, discordant, sombre and atmospheric. Such adjectives contribute but never tell the whole tale.” – Real Groove
The album is structured as a progression from summer. The cover image shows a NZ pohutukawa tree in flower. It continues through autumn, a time of harvest, preparation, shortening daylight, and the shedding of old dead layers.
It finishes with an extended live version of ‘O Henry Ending‘, recorded at the Winter’s first gig.
“O Henry falling leaves & branches, talk a worried sad refrain
Your eyes half tilt, your brain half mast
To tie the fond anonymous bond beyond yr aching shelter lying walls
That fall to fall, & raise the days, museum haze …”
Dave Edwards (archtop acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocal, lyrics)
Sam Prebble (violin) / Mike Kingston (cello)
Simon Sweetman (percussion)
Recorded in Wellington, NZ, 2003
1. | Summer Skin 06:19 |
|
2.
|
Mouth of the Caveman 03:26
|
|
3.
| |
|
4.
| |
|
5.
|
Loose Autumn Moans is dedicated to Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge), who died in 2014.
Rest easy Sam, and thank you..
Continuing the seasonal theme, Dave Edwards, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman (occasionally joined by Sam Prebble) formed a regular free improvising instrumental trio , the Winter.
“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
The original C60 cassette release of Loose Autumn Moans included solo interludes recorded the previous year, in 2002. These have since been reissued as a separate album.
By shortening to just the 2003 ensemble sessions, Loose Autumn Moans becomes concise. It emphasises the lyrics, and the jazzy acoustic instrumental interplay.
A different take of ‘O Henry Ending‘ was recorded in Melbourne, Australia in 2005. I had just bought a banjo (which I still have), Mike Kingston played acoustic guitar this time, and Francesca Mountfort took the cello role, along with Cylvi M on percussion.
While much of the album was in a new style, incorporating electronica and field recordings, ‘O Henry Ending’ and the presence of fellow expat kiwis provided a thematic bridge from the Wellington days.
To illustrate how a song can be interpreted in multiple ways, the fiffdimension 25th anniversary 2CD features Mouth of the Caveman – and both the 2005 Melbourne version and a new (2022) a live electric arrangement of O Henry Ending
Three of the Loose Autumn Moans tracks were revived in new solo arrangements for these more recent live albums:
Tracks from Loose Autumn Moans also appear on this compilation, that gives an overview of the early years.
My great-great-grandfather (himself a young man at the time) self-published a book of poems in 19th century Scotland. It includes a piece about Autumn.
Adapting John Collie’s words to music is a current major work-in-progress, that .allows a new ‘mature’ version of my acoustic style, and shows the early works, like Loose Autumn Moans, in a new light!
Dave Edwards solo cassette tracks, in Wellington NZ, 2002.
These solo recordings were originally released as interludes, between the acoustic ensemble pieces in the Loose Autumn Moans (2003) album. But they’re now re-presented separately as a standalone short album (with a different running order and some light remastering).
I wrote the words to the title track in a notebook during the wrap party for a short film I’d worked on – a surrealist description of the evening, based on deliberate mishearings of the conversations around me:
“Taking notes throughout the performance. Humans become worms, with a sameness that is frightening. Politics is bad: we knew this already, but now it’s confirmed. Collapse into laughter.
A cigarette chair from which comes a dictator; everyone in thrall to his conversation. A plastic wooden horse to capture the city – incongruous? Indeed. Expelled all the virtues? You to decide.”
I made the soundscape with electric guitar and a 4-track tape recorder.
The other tracks on the album expanded on this wordy fusion of postpunk singer/songwriter and free improvisation. Radio stations wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
In the early 2000s, 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.
Although I lived not far from Courtenay Place I was more interested in the scene based around Newtown venue The Space (a precursor to the Pyramid Club), then in its baroque period.
I was an underemployed arts graduate, living in a scody flat doing casual work as a film extra (blink and you’ll miss me in Lord of the Rings) or builder’s labourer, and (trying &) failing to write a novel. Partly due to lack of money, I made my own entertainment.
Although the internet existed in early form, this was before social media – so instead of selfies, oversharing took a more oblique form, filtered through art.
In all, I was a noisy (as opposed to noise) guitar & spoken word footnote to the Wellington free jazz / avant garde music scene.
| 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 |
The tracks on After the Filmshoot were originally part of
Acoustic songs with a string section, recorded on all-analogue equipment, by Dave Edwards, with Sam Prebble, Mike Kingston, and Simon Sweetman (2003)
Continue reading “After the filmshoot (2002)”‘Solitude‘ appears on this compilation of 2020 lockdown sounds from around the world, curated by Campbell Kneale …
“Something about this global pandemic is inspiring people to create and/or curate art on a massive scale…. and this compilation, being offered for free/name-yr-price, is indeed M A S S I V E.” – Howard Stelzer
Psi-solation has 119 tracks, you can pay what you want, and it’s the 2020 album of the year by default!
Campbell and Dave also recorded a noise duo in 2018:
Dearest fellow music-hounds and shut-aways, CELEBRATE PSI PHENOMENON proudly presents…
‘PSI-SOLATION: A GLOBAL COMPILATION OF MUSIC MADE IN LOCKDOWN’
Continue reading “Psi-solation”
The first piece from the book Poems & Lyrics by John Collie (1856).
Recorded by John Collie’s great-great-grandson, during pandemic lockdown, March 2020.
‘SOLITUDE’by John Collie, 1856
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. Continue reading “Solitude”
A duo with my nephew, Hans Landon-Lane, 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.
Film footage by my father, Alastair Edwards (1936-2010), in Nadi and around Viti Levu in 1976.
It’s from my parents’ honeymoon, 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…
I played solo acoustic at the Fernside Gardens Open Day on Sunday 16th February, 11am.
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]
fiffdimension 