Poems & Lyrics by John Collie, 1856

In 1856, my great-great-grandfather John Collie (1834-1893), of Boyndie, Scotland, published a book : Poems and Lyrics

(in the English

and Scotch Dialects).

I‘ve been setting some of it to music over the past few years – along with some of his other descendants: my nephews Hans and Rhys Landon-Lane, my niece Celeste Rochery, and my sister Megan Edwards-Rochery .

The Troubled Times (trio with Antony Milton and David Heath) also do an epic electric blues guest arrangement of The Dying Monarch (a key crossover track that ties together the different strands of my music).

For me this is a major work-in-progress; an acknowledgement of my pākeha whakapapa (European ancestry); an inspiration for new music (a mostly folk style seemed fitting); a window into the culture of the time period and a vicarious travel experience (plans to visit Scotland in 2020 were ruined by the pandemic); a family precedent for DIY outsider art that puts fiffdimension in a deeper context; and gives me renewed appreciation for the beauty and musicality of the English (and Scots) language.

“T’were a noble sight to see the mighty men of old, who bled that their countries might be free from the tyrants’ fatal hold – yet I’d deem it a nobler sight by far to behold the sons of the harp & lyre!

“[…] If aught can claim a spirit’s admiration, Sure it must be this beautiful creation“
John Collie (1834-1893)

In 1858 John Collie emigrated to New Zealand.

His book is available free online.

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Autumn

It’s the first day of autumn (2023) here in the southern hemisphere (good riddance to Cyclone Gabrielle, which caused devastation in other parts of the North Island), so here’s a track from Poems & Lyrics (in the English Dialect) (1856):

AGAIN old Autumn murmurs from the hill , His annual toils already are begun ; His angry blast howls down the fertile vale , Gust after gust with melancholy moan .

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in a wildflower state (Western Australia, 2013)

In late 2012, after leaving Japan, I moved to Australia for the second time – this time to Western Australia for a couple of years…

in a wildflower state is a lost album – recorded in Perth WA, 2012-2014 – unreleased at the time.

The music here is rustic, reflecting the vast ancient arid landscape, overlaid with touches of Nyoongar and bogan sounds. It also includes appearances by Nat da Hatt, Cylvi M, and Renato Salvador.

Known as the Wildflower State, Western Australia covers an enormous area – the size of India, but with a population of under three million. Metaphorically, to be a ‘wildflower’ can also mean a wandering spirit or traveller (such as a kiwi expat on an OE).

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águas brilhantes: 2018-2022

fiffdimension vol 4

made in Featherston, Masterton, and Suva – ft Antony Milton, James Robinson, Dr Emit Snake-Beings, Campbell Kneale, and lyrics by John Collie (1834-1893) – the title is ‘Wairarapa’ in Portuguese.

Collaborations with my ancestors and younger relatives, friends in Fiji, a painter in Otago, the curator of PseudoArcana, and the family dog.

águas brilhantes (or ‘glistening waters’ in English) is the Portuguese translation of Wairarapa, the Māori name of the region where I’ve lived the last few years.

My ancestors arrived here in the 19th century – one was a Scottish poet, another a stowaway from the Azores islands.

a followup to
fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/gleefully-unknown-1997-2005
fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/fame-oblivion-2005-2012
fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/other-islands-2012-2018

with videos at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtbrBpNjlOHOhGouOChNl3jVUif1AZIl6 )

águas brilhantes (or ‘glistening waters’ in English) is the Portuguese translation of Wairarapa, the Māori name of the region where I live. Several of my pākeha ancestors arrived here in the 19th century.

Much of the music is inspired by two of my great-great-grandfathers – John Collie (1834-1893), a Scottish poet, who helped build the Remutaka incline railway; and Manuel Bernard (1847-1928), who left the Azores islands, as a teenaged stowaway on a whaling ship and ended up in Masterton. It’s also a torch-passing to the next generation – recorded with nephews Hans and Rhys, and niece Celeste.

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The Winter: 2003-2015

Simon Sweetman – drums, percussion

Mike Kingston – guitars, cello (2-5), clarinet (7,11,14), charango (7,10)

Dave Edwards – guitars, vocal (3), harmonica (4,7,9), banjo (7), ukulele (7,9,11), saxophone (10,14), piano (10), bass (12,13), electronics (6,8,13)

Wellington, New Zealand,
free improv music trio, formed on winter solstice day June 2003.

An archive compilation,

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w/ Hans Landon-Lane, 3 January 2022

Happy new year! Here are some first recordings for 2022, made on 3rd of January,

with Hans Landon-Lane (my nephew) on accordion, ukulele and vocal:

‘The Land of My Youth

‘Here’s a Health to my Cronies’

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Top 10 albums in 2021*

by Dave Edwards (aka Dave Black) and collaborators,

(*as picked by casual streaming listeners, based on % of tracks played in full minus % of tracks skipped… not necessarily the ones I would have picked – there’s little or no correlation between the “important” works and the parts other people like!).

#1 After the Filmshoot (2002)

Dave Edwards solo postpunk spoken word free improv guitar spasms (2002)

[send us your review]

#2 Other Islands: 2012-2018

Gamelan Taniwha Jaya at Te Papa, Wellington, 2016

Compilation made in New Zealand, Okinawa, Western Australia, Indonesia and Fiji,,

by Dave Black with The Winter, The Electricka Zoo, Dr Emit Snake-Beings, Nat da Hatt, Campbell Kneale, Gamelan Sekar Puri, Gamelan Padhang Moncar, and Gamelan Taniwha Jaya

“The 20 song album covers traditional Javanese and Balinese gamelan, Asia–Pacific folk music, free jazz, and free noise…. If you have an open inquiring mind and love hearing a variety of sound, this is excellent. – Darryl Baser, muzic.net.nz“

# 3 After Maths & Sciences (2005/06)

An Australian novel for the ear – a double album recorded in Melbourne, Victoria,

and Sydney and Gosford New South Wales,

by Dave Black with Cylvi M, Mike Kingston and Francesca Mountfort (2005-2006)

“Dave Black’s debut release (and a re-birth, if you like, for David Edwards) is as much a post-modern piece of Performance Journalism as it is a static batch of “songs” or tracks, After Maths & Sciences is a pleasing challenge of an album. It lives up to the cliché of presenting something new with each listen,”– Simon Sweetman

#4 Live 1999

Solo postpunk live at the old Bar Bodega, Wellington NZ, opening for Chris Knox

“If only I could play guitar like that… bastard” – Chris Knox

# 5 Glimpses of Utopia (2020)

Palette-cleansing Dave Black solo electric guitar improv.

[send us your review]

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Scotland, postponed

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.

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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….

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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

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