The Marion Flow, March 2019

Since last year I’ve been getting back into playing solo acoustic. Here’s a 6 March 2019 version of ‘the Marion Flow‘:

It appears on the Live 2019 album:

Originally recorded in New Plymouth in 1999, it became the title track of my second album:

The Marion Flow (Taranaki, 1999)

The 1999 recording had quite a different vibe – spoken word delivery, electric guitars panned left & right, and Paul Winstanley playing a cymbal through a pitch shifter, turning it into a deep sea gong sound.

The Marion Flow (Wellington, 2001)

On other occasions it became a rock riff, based around just an E note and its octave.

I was surrounded by wider & weirder music too. I moved to Wellington and found a kiwi avant-garde scene with free jazz, noise, and theatre gallore. We eventually finished The Marion Flow album in 2001, after recording sessions at Thistle Hall.

Both the live electric and acoustic versions appear on the

Acoustic (yin) / Electric (yang) 2CD compilation

Two sides of a coin!

Lyrics

The lyrics are some of my favourite. They were scribbled in a notebook sometime in the late 90s. I was digesting the influence of literary modernism (eg lines like ‘yea take in that wake’ a shout out to James Joyce, using nouns as verbs and vice versa, and other general flouting of grammatical rules).

Taranaki and its coastlines inspired much of the atmosphere.

Continue reading →

Here’s a Health to my Cronies (by John Collie, 1856)

19th century Scottish drinking song, by John Collie (1834-1893), from his book ‘Poems and Lyrics‘

Played by his great-great-grandson Dave Edwards – first public performance of this piece, at Dragon Inn, Featherston, NZ, 6 Feb 2019 .

A couple of months later I played it at Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon on 4th of May 2019

which features on the Live 2019 album.

HERE’S A HEALTH TO MY CRONIES.

HERE’S a health to my cronies where’er they reside, Whether this side or that o’ yon big rowin’ tide ; I care na what country or kingdom they claim, Be they English or Irish to me it’s the same, Gif their hearts to a glass o’ gude whisky incline, I instantly class them as “Cronies o’ mine.”

Awa wi’ yon nabob purse-proud o’ his gear, Neither he nor his wealth hae charms for us here; Awa wi’ yon fop wi’ his clear headed cane, A bit trip through the warld, it’s use may explain; But welcome my cronies wherever ye be, To join in this gude reekin’ bumper wi’ me.

A ﬁg for the wealth that this warld can gie, We naething brought here, sae we’ve naething to lea; The farmer wi’ ousen an’ acres galore, Has his crosses just now, an’ may sune count on more; Then come here, my cronies, let’s kick awa care, As lang’s we’ve a groat or a shilling to spare.

2005

The year got off to a good start, with Ascension Band: Evolution

The successful collaboration with Nigel Patterson, Ryan Prebble, and over a dozen other musicians, from jazz-schooled to untrained punks, won the best music award in the NZ Fringe Festival.

I had my first taste of success (the fame part of Fame & Oblivion 2005-2012)…

…But by this time I was ready to see the world beyond Aotearoa. I shifted across the Tasman Sea to Melbourne – in Australia, the West Island.

For the next few months I lived in Brunswick, and worked in temp jobs around the city and in rural Victoria.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The results became After Maths & Sciences

Continue reading “2005” →

Half way to summer, 21 June 2018

Thursday 21 June, 8pm @ Fringe Bar

26-32 Allen Street, Wellington, NZ

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Edwards (@fiffdimension)

fiffdimension is an umbrella name for music and multimedia projects by Dave Edwards, solo or with various collaborators. Shows may include acoustic songs, spoken word, distorted postpunk, free improvisation, lo fi electronica, Eurasian folk music, 19th century ballads, video installations, or all or none of the above.

www.facebook.com/fiffdimension
www.fiffdimension.com

MuscleMan are an alt. country band that write dark, sweet, melancholy songs about love, loss, and questionable life decisions. Their performances range from intimate, acoustic sessions, to loud, raucous, throw the drum kit into the crowd encounters. Most of all though, they play with feeling.

https://www.facebook.com/musclemannz/

Fredd Marshall is a sonic shaman. Using his voice he takes you on a journey to the unknown. Improvising loops, drones and overtones he will bring you to contemplate the universe and rethink what it means to be human. He has been to the realms of infinity and brought back treasures to share.

http://www.soundcloud.com/theshaman/

As a solo acoustic bassist, Vince Cabrera draws inspiration from sources such as the Argentine folk music of his childhood, American primitive guitarists such as John Fahey, and composer Erik Satie for a rich ambient, acoustic experience.

https://soundcloud.com/vince-cabrera-1

Ascension Band 2004

The post-punk big band Ascension Band convened in 2003-2005… here’s the 2004 lineup performing at the Meatwaters Festival at Happy in Wellington.

Nigel Patterson – hammond organ & conductor
Dave Edwards – guitar & electronics
Mike Kingston – guitar
Jesse Toews – bass
Warwick Donald – bass
Antony Milton – violin & electronics
Damian Stewart – laptop
Jason Secto – cornet
Simon O’Rorke – percussion
Myles Climo – drums

The following year we won best music award in the 2005 Wellington Fringe Festival

Ascension Band 2005

“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 →

Fringe Festival 2016: East to West

Here’s my first major project for 2016, as part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival:

The show is a big OE epic of video & music from the Tasman to the Atlantic, a decade in the making.

It takes the audience on a journey half way around the world from New Zealand, across Australia, via a dozen countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, Albania, Portugal and more.

l’ll play a live soundtrack myself as a solo performance, to evoke each country… it’ll be a culmination of the travelling and field recording /world music direction I’ve taken over the past decade.

So far it’s screened in New Zealand Fringe Festival and also at the Southland Arts Festival in Invercargill.

My 2005 Fringe show Ascension Band won best music award. So did the 2006 Lines of Flight show in Dunedin that I was part of.

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 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

Continue reading →

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.