Other Islands: 2012-2018

“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

Featuring tracks from the albums

If you enjoy this, try the previous compilations

Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 

and Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012
Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2013

Friday 16th March @ Leroy’s

Postscript: thanks for coming along, keep an eye on www.fiffdimension.com/the-electricka-zoo for more!

The Electricka Zoo, 16-03-18

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Friday 16 March, 8:00pm, free entry, @ Leroy’s Bar, 2 Plimmer Steps

New Zealand Fringe Festival:

Continue reading “Friday 16th March @ Leroy’s”

22nd July – Tapioca Dragon, the Electricka Zoo, 1/3 Octave Band @ Pyramid Club

A night of improv, otherworld musics, and ethereal sonic crunch at Wellington’s Pyramid Club, plus an album release for The Electricka Zoo.

Saturday 22nd July 2017, 8pm

@ the Pyramid Club

272 Taranaki Street, Wellington NZ – $10 door sales

 The Electricka Zoo

The duo of Dave Black & the Digitator, The Electricka Zoo combine influences from EDM and post-punk avant-garde rock to jazz, reggae, Balkan and Portuguese music. Their self-titled debut album will be released at this gig, and features 8 original tunes by the bass/guitar and electronica duo wrapped in colourful mandala artwork by Lucie Hannon.

1/3 Octave Band

Also in the line up; the 1/3 Octave Band, aka Bill Wood. A master of tones and drones, Bill an his collaborators in the group have released many CD,s LP’s over the past decade, and recently been championed by no less than former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins in his column for LA Weekly. Don’t miss this once a year appearance from Mr Wood.

Tapioca Dragon

And let’s not forget and that merry duo of free thinkers, Tapioca Dragon, feat. Andy Wright (ex-Orchestra of Spheres) and Mark Williams (MarineVille / Cookie Brooklyn and the Crumbs). Tapioca Dragon released their debut album last year, a collection of 5 improvisations building from sparse, loops and jabs into a psychedelic spin cycle.

The Digitator

The Digitator: New Zealand Producer, Songwriter, Vocalist, Drummer, Synth Driver, Live Looping Musician.

A fellow traveller from Taranaki, New Zealand, who formed The Electricka Zoo in late 2015 with Dave Black.
Continue reading “The Digitator”

the Ballad of William Knife

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”

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 “Ascension Band 2005”

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…

https://youtu.be/kkzXD4HRfoc&w=280&h=150

https://youtu.be/bceQOwQL9Sw&w=280&h=150

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

Continue reading “The Winter: Exit Points (2015)”

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