A Visit to the Beehive

A pleasant surprise this week to get a small (single figure) royalty payment from APRA for radio airplay for the shortest track from The Marion Flow, recorded back in 2001!

That goes some way towards recovering the $600 or so I spent recording the album (a lot of money for a broke student back then). I can’t claim it’s a prescient political satire that predicted this week’s news events, but maybe like the album as a whole it’s just timeless…

It’s also, for fans of Wellington avant-garde music, a rare opportunity to hear Simon O’Rorke play a straight rock beat on drums!

The Beehive is the nickname for the Executive Wing of New Zealand’s government building in Wellington .

The Woods

www.thewoodsnz.com

The Woods EP is available free during May 2017 (NZ Music Month) only… grab a copy at www.thewoodsnz.com/musicmonth2017

If you’re a fan of World Music, Blues or Jazz, then ‘The Woods’ are a must have for your collection. With influences from John Lee Hooker to Pharaoh Sanders, from Africa to Peru, their music will take you some place else…

For a FREE DOWNLOAD of ‘Cuzco’ and ‘Epic Dance Phantasy’ CLICK HERE

“This is easily one of my favorite albums of the year.

Continue reading “The Woods” →

The Winter: Exit Points (2015)

Today is the last day of winter in the southern hemisphere – so to celebrate, here’s the fifth album from The Winter – a New Zealand free improvisation trio of Mike Kingston, Simon Sweetman and Dave Edwards… with a sound that swerves from acoustic folk/blues with hints of Asian, Celtic, and Balkan influences, to electroacoustic soundscapes, abstract dissonance, and pots & pans percussion.

Mike Kingston: guitar, bass, clarinet, electronics
Dave Edwards: guitar, bass, banjo, harmonica, ukulele, sanshin, electronics
Simon Sweetman: drums and percussion, electronics

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Nat da Hatt: Volume V

Presenting the second new solo album for 2015 from Nat da Hatt!

Volume V follows hot on the heels of 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.

He’s also collaborated with fiffdimension’s Dave Black on the 2014 explicitly Japanese psychedelic album

ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes

and some 2015 collaborations in progress

as well as with American jaw-harp maestro Richard Morrison as Mezcla de Refresco

https://natdahatt.bandcamp.com/

The Winter at Pyramid Club, 2015

Thanks to Brent for the photos and to everyone who came along to the Pyramid Club on Thursday!

The Winter’s new album ‘Exit Points’ is now available!

Continue reading →

Mike Kingston

Mike Kingston is a multi-instrumentalist front-man and composer in bands such as Cumbia Blazera, ‘Bella Cajon‘ , ‘The Wagtails‘, and Phantasticus. He continues to perform regularly throughout Wellington and New Zealand.

From 2003-2015 he was a key member of The Winter (with Dave Edwards and Simon Sweetman).

He also played cello on Loose Autumn Moans (2003),

electric guitar in the 2003-2004 lineups of Ascension Band (in his San Shimla alias),

and acoustic guitar on (the Melbourne half of) After Maths & Sciences (2005).

Some of Mike’s other projects (besides the fiffdimension collaborations) include:

Simon Sweetman

Simon Sweetman is a Wellington NZ author and musician.

He is best known for his music criticism and poetry, and for his distinctive homemade ‘pots & pans’ percussion for The Winter (trio with Mike Kingston and Dave Edwards) and (more recently) Dirty Spoons, Yo (with Sam Walters);

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Simon blogs at https://simonsweetman.substack.com/ ;

and records spoken-word albums as Second Storey Teller;

his books include The Death of Music Journalism (2020),

and he has a new book coming out later in 2024…

Scratched Surface

The debut album from fiffdimension!

“Worth searching out coz this lo-fi singer/songwriter oddball has a unique take on the genre. He’s pissed off, a tad fucked up (as usual), but not full of lugubrious self-pity (as unusual) and is happy to get raucous & obnoxious in just the right kinda way.” – Chris Knox

Listen

About

Scratched Surface is a genuine 1990s teenage no-budget lo-fi post-punk singer-songwriter artifact from the Taranaki, New Zealand underground. It includes both electric and acoustic tracks¹.

The title alludes to its status as a first effort from fiffdimension², with much more to come (‘scratching the surface’). It also suggests scratches on a disc, reflecting the lo-fi production values and a slightly ‘damaged’ pre-millennial teenager outlook.

I didn’t come from a conventional musical background. Instead of learning to play cover songs first, I skipped straight to writing my own³. The musicianship is rudimentary, and the lyrics are full of youthful angst – but also self-aware humour and ironic detachment.

“One day I’m gonna be a star, but I can’t be bothered to practice my guitar.

I’m not gonna sing you a cover song, ’cause I’d only make it sound all wrong.

I got the ‘can’t play for shit and my voice is shot to hell’ blues”

The album also includes early forays into free improvisation, in tracks like King Street Boogie and Eat the Noise.

It was recorded on analogue reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, and self-released on CD-R. The online reissue includes download-only bonus tracks and previously unreleased material.

Credits

Dave Edwards – acoustic and electric guitar, harmonica, vocal, lyrics
Tim McVicar – bass (2, 12, 14), percussion (3), electric guitar (12, 13)
Brett, Ross, Tammy, Dawn et al – percussion and vocals (15-16)

Recorded in New Plymouth, NZ, 1997-1998

Special thanks to Alastair Edwards, Keith Finnerty, Karl Taylor, Brian Wafer

New Plymouth, New Zealand

Tracklist

Continue reading →

Snake Beings

Dr Emit Snake-Beings – founder of the Hamilton Underground Film Festival, composer, musician and electrical shrine maker – is a New Zealand / British experimental filmmaker and musician. He has produced over 40 independently released film soundtrack CDs, and made a number of short experimental and narrative films in Spain, U.K. and New Zealand.

His music includes two duo albums with fiffdimension: