1856 to 2026 – DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
New live album!
With New Zealand in lockdown this might be the next best thing to an actual gig..
Track 1 recorded live at the Fringe Bar, Wellington NZ, 27-02-18
Tracks 2-7 recorded live at Escape Velocity, Featherston NZ, 10-03-18
As part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival
The Digitator – midi, laptop, vocal
Dave Black – bass, electric guitar
A new multilayered Dave Black electric improv / xenochronous composition.
The track continues the evolution of my Wairarapa one man band 2020s ‘late style’, which began with Glimpses of Utopia (2020) and Spastic Rhythms (2021)
It was originally created for the Psi-solation+1 – 2021 compilation album curated by fellow Featherston resident Campbell Kneale. He’s known for his noise music, paintings of cats, and as proprietor of the Miracle Room.
Continue reading “Outono 21”2021 compilation album curated by Campbell Kneale. He’s known for his noise music, paintings of cats, and as proprietor of the Miracle Room gallery in Featherston.
A sequel to his acclaimed 119-track Psi-solation compilation of music made in lockdown 2020.
Both albums are pay what you want via Campbell’s label, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon.
I contributed a new Dave Black piece, Outono 21.
Continue reading “PSI-SOLATION + 1 (one year on)”This track was originally recorded by The Electricka Zoo (2017), and appears on the Other Islands: 2012-2018 compilation. It’s based around a (non-diatonic) Cmaj7 – Amaj7 pattern, with a bossa nova rhythm.
It’s dedicated to my great-great-grandfather Manuel Bernard.
He was born in 1847 in Ponta Delgada, Flores Island, Azores, Portugal.
The words are in (beginner) Portuguese:
Eu gosto de falar
no meus ancestrais
de as ilhas Atlânticas
Madeiras e Açores
Portugal is the westernmost country in Europe, with its back to it geographically and culturally. It was the edge of the known world for Europeans until the Age of Discovery. The Azores islands are even further west.
As a teenager, Manuel Bernard stowed away on a passing American whaling ship.
From a remote island in the Atlantic ocean, he ended up on an equally remote island in the Pacific – on the opposite side of the world, in Wellington, New Zealand.
Continue reading “ilhas Atlânticas”A quickfire Dave Black solo EP, recorded one summer morning, 24 January 2021
It includes ilhas Atlânticas, a tribute to my Portuguese ancestor Manuel Bernard.
| 1. | banjo trio 24/1/21 03:01 |
| 2. | drums 1 24/1/21 00:49 |
| 3. | guitar trio (ringtone) 24/1/21 02:07 |
| 4. | gritches blerk 24/1/21 01:12 |
| 5. | spastic drum solo 24/1/21 04:38 |
| 6. | ilhas Atlânticas 03:12 |
| 7. | Outono 21 08:49 |
The album adds banjo and electric drums to the 2020s Wairarapa DIY solo electric improv style begun in
The first of the ‘late period’ solo instrumental albums.
A compilation of tracks from the Wairarapa in these years.
“It is unusual to find someone playing so confidently in such diverse areas, and anyone into independent music will certainly find something on here to enjoy – Kev Rowland, muzic.nz
Palette-cleansing electric solo improvisations.
Recorded solo in Featherston, New Zealand, 2019-20.
Not specifically a ‘lockdown album’, but nonetheless recorded solo at home during the pandemic.
It marked the emergence of a new ‘late period‘ solo style.
I’m not a trained jazz musician, but nor do I fit neatly into the ‘NZ noise‘ genre.
| 1. | Abbadebdab 03:00 |
| 2. | October ring 03:37 |
| 3. | 11 through the viewer 7 (acoustic) 01:24 |
| 4. | Torrential logistics 04:05 |
| 5. | Usquebaugh 03:53 |
| 6. | Walking through an aye (in Paparoa national park) 03:53 |
| 7. | Solstice Shards 19 05:07 |
| 8. | Teenager 01:39 |
| Campbell Kneale – electric guitar, analogue synth | Dave Black – bass, electric toothbrush, key ring |
One continuous piece, unabridged, no overdubs – the first time we’d played together.
Featherston NZ, 2018.
Two 3min excerpts appear on the compilations Other Islands: 2012-2018
and aguas brilhantes: 2018-2022 :
…but you need to hear the full length version to truly enter Campbell’s world.
Campbell Kneale is an internationally renowned sound artist, a prolific recording artist and performer and relentless collaborator. He currently releases albums as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Previous projects include Black Boned Angel, Birchville Cat Motel, Ming and Brilliant Swords.
Campbell curated the epic 119-track Psi-solation compilation during the Covid-19 pandemic:
Dave contributed an acoustic track, John Collie‘s poem ‘Solitude’ from 1856.
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 |
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Mouth of the Caveman 03:26
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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!
fiffdimension 