1856 to 2026 – DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
A Ton of Feathers is the first collaboration
by Campbell Kneale (guitar, analogue synthesiser)
& Dave Black (bass, electric toothbrush, video).
Made in Featherston, Wairarapa NZ in 2018.
New Zealand folk music, in the tradition of Birchville Cat Motel, the Dead C, and Len Lye.
This excerpt appears on the compilation Other Islands: 2012-2018, and is part of a longer piece, due for release in 2020.
“The 20 song album covers traditional Javanese and Balinese gamelan, Asian folk music, to free jazz, and free noise. It’s not for anyone with narrow preconceived ideas about what music is, but it is for everyone else.
“If you have an open inquiring mind and love hearing a variety of sound, this is excellent.” – Darryl Baser, muzic.net.nz
by Dave Black (acoustic & electric guitars, banjo, harmonica, laptop, bass, tenor saxophone, field recordings, piano, ukulele, sanshin, saron, jublag, demung, vocal), with
- and field recordings from Western Australia, Indonesia, Okinawa (Japan), and Fiji.
Featuring tracks from the albums
If you enjoy this, try the previous compilations
Music video from the album ‘South Island Sessions‘, set in 19th century New Zealand with an ecological theme. ‘The Ballad of William Knife’ was the name of the show we took to the Dunedin Fringe Festival in 2006.
See also the videos for ‘Bandit Joe on a Scraded Gat’ and ‘BFD’
1861 revisited – Continue reading “the Ballad of William Knife”
“With elements of punk, post-punk, jazz, classical, straight rock, opera and music hall, the Ascension Band are that rare thing: Something Wholly Other. They retain avant garde cred and still manage to rock harder than AC/DC.” – www.varsity.co.nz
| Dave Edwards – electric guitar & electronics Nigel Patterson – hammond organ & conductor Will Rattray – electric guitar Bell Murphy – bass Warwick Donald – bass Murray Stewart – keyboards Damian ‘Frey’ Stewart – laptop Ryan Prebble – tone generator Sam Jenks – trumpet Felicity Perry – vocal Atushi Iseki – vocal Matt Baxter – drums Greta Welson – drums |
This riff
Continue reading “Ascension Band 2005”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
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 “The Winter at Pyramid Club, 2015”The first collaboration with even more legendary & underground NZ artist Snake Beings.
Ngumbang is the first collaborative album by two of New Zealand’s more unusual artist/musician/filmmaker/ethnomusicologists.
Performed on guitars, bass, banjo, percussion, saxophones, clarinets, harmonicas, synthesisers, Okinawan sanshin, ukulele, violin, loop pedal, piano, drums and spoken word.
The title ‘Ngumbang’ is an Indonesian word that refers to the slight difference in tuning between a pair of gamelan instruments, which gives gamelan music its shimmering quality.
The album name reflects a shared interest in ethnomusicology and experimentation, and the almost-but-not-quite-equivalent approaches of these two artists.
The album was recorded in and near Auckland, New Zealand in 2014–2015 and includes live performances at Vitamin S and the Audio Foundation.
who over several decades has travelled intensively in Spain, Holland, the Middle East, Mexico, America and Japan, is a New Zealand / British experimental filmmaker and musician who 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. www.snakebeings.co.nz
originally from Taranaki and active since the late 90s on the NZ underground music scene, began by fusing acoustic songs, noisy postpunk, spoken word and avant-garde improvisation – and has diversified further from there. Notable performances include the award-winning 14-piece Ascension Band, appearing as an international artist at the Liquid Architecture Festival in Brisbane, Australia, and teaching a thousand Okinawan school students to perform a haka. www.fiffdimension.com
| 1. | Huia Vortex (feat. Nat da Hatt) 03:56 |
| 2. | The Feathered Serpent Sings Again 05:13 |
| 3. | Illbelly Gritts 03:57 |
| 4. | Watching a Painting Melt 01:47 |
| 5. | さくら さくら (Japanese folk song) – live at the Audio Foundation 04:52 |
| 6. | Pig in the Bamboo 01:47 |
| 7. | Live at Vitamin S (#1.5) 04:37 |
| 8. | Pick up the Pieces (after the gig) 04:48 |
| 9. | Pick up the Pieces (after the jam session) 04:45 |
| 10. | Ornery Return Cravings 02:40 |
| 11. | kuningan dan perunggu (Indonesian brass and bronze) 02:50 |
| 12. | So Long Notes 06:01 |
Dave and Cylvi contributed to Postmoderncore‘s first volume of Dada Songwriting Compilation, Rejection dryrot ripple Gombage.
Condo Encyclopedia coalseam egg 2:02
by Uneasy Chairs (USA, guitar) / T4x0n0m13s (España, bass + distortion pedal) / Dave Black (NZ, banjo) / Cylvi Manthyng (NZ, shaker)
Download entire album / View album at archive.org
Each contributor created two mins of raw sound – a single track recorded live with no post-processing. After each set of four tracks arrived, they were blindly put together to create each track – as & when they arrived in Corporal Tofulung’s inbox.
The title of the album was created by writing the 40 contributed words on individual pieces of paper & drawing them randomly out of a bucket. Continue reading “Dada Songwriting: Rejection dryrot ripple Gombage”
A few years ago I wrote a chapter of Jazz Aotearoa, a book about New Zealand jazz music history, discussing the free improvisation and avant-garde jazz scene in Wellington at the turn of the millennium.
in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway is a collection of improvised instrumental music with some of the musicians in that scene, from the point of view of my own attempts as an untrained outsider to fit in with these advanced jazz players – including Jeff Henderson, Blair Latham , Paul Winstanley, Dan Beban, Julie Bevan and more.
The title is a reference to Simon’s house on Norway Street, where the recordings took place. The ‘non idiomatic idiom’ suggests the paradox that improvising non-idiomatically (eg in an original personal style without reference to any genre – playing neither jazz, nor rock, blues, reggae, classical etc) is an idiom in itself.
It was recorded in Wellington in two halves, in 1999
Simon O’Rorke – percussion
Paul Winstanley – synth bass
Blair Latham – alto sax
Jeff Henderson – clarinet
Bridget Kelly – tenor sax
Dan Beban – electric guitar
Dave Edwards – electric and acoustic guitars
and 2014, to show an evolution.
Simon O’Rorke – synthesisers
Blair Latham – bass clarinet
Julie Bevan – acoustic guitar
Michael Hall – alto sax
Chris Prosser – violin
Dave Edwards – bass, electronics, tenor sax
In 2024 Simon O’Rorke struck up a new collaboration with Dave Edwards, this time in the Wairarapa, as a trio with Antony Milton named The Margins:
Free improvisation is a genre of music with a self-explanatory name. Nothing is planned in advance, and the performers create the music on the spot by responding to what the others are doing in that moment.
Continue reading “in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (part 1, 1999)”A companion to The Marion Flow, recorded in 1999 by the same lineup who provided that album’s longest (and least conventionally song-based track, pointing the way towards the increasingly radio-unfriendly Mantis Shaped and Worrying), “Lucifer Directing Traffic (at 3AM)”
Recording engineer Paul Winstanley, head of the excellent, now San Francisco-based avant-garde music label Eden Gully recalls it thus:
“after recording tracks for The Marion Flow at Wafer HQ in New Plymouth an ad hoc group of associated locals assembled to record for several sessions of improvised rock/noise deconstruction. really, the only rock references here come from the guitars, with the sputtering synth, air-sucking turntables, didgeridoo and sundry toys providing layers of surreal abstraction. throw in some spoken word and a special guest appearance by N.P. record mogul Brian Wafer on vacuum cleaner – and the dAdApApA nova had blazed and fizzled in the blink of an eye.
“it wasn’t until several years later after the master mixes had been lost, partially recovered and then rediscovered intact again that “Waiting for the Drummer’ was given a final mastering and released as a CDR on EdenGully. it’s been a long strange journey…..”
released 01 August 2006 on Eden Gully as EG15
Fiff Dimension Dave – guitars, spoken word and furbie / Speed Cook – turntables and recording / Pal Diddly – synth and pithy observations / The Digitator – guitar, didgeridoo / BWafer – vacuum cleaner and coffees
| 1. | just in time for christmas 09:03 |
| 2. | making merry 09:00 |
| 3. | singing and drinking blood 08:31 |
| 4. | elves are farting bodies 14:10 |
| 5. | groan in extra stuffing 12:19 |
| 6. | smashed robots litter the pine 05:34 |
| 7. | an orgy of turkey gobble 08:04 |
fiffdimension 