2025 roundup

Another productive year here! We released:

Ruasagavulu ka lima (Fiji)

An acoustic solo album, made in the Yasawa islands, Fiji. Ukulele and field recordings, with acoustic bass and percussion.

Poems & Lyrics by John Collie (1856)

A musical adaptation of my ancestor’s book, finally ‘close enough’ to finished after seven years… or 169, depending how you count it.

Featherston Free Sound Ensemble

A new collaboration with turntablists Guy Walker and Alex V – free improv electronica for the regions.

Experiments Under the Hills

October-November, with Guy Walker and Alex V

The Troubled Times

with Antony Milton and David Heath in Masterton NZ.

Unsteady Ground

As close as we’ve come to a ‘political’ album

dDA

We swapped instruments and almost formed a new band.

Homo Homini Lupus

We appeared on this ‘various artists’ compilation from Louisville, Kentucky

Smudge

Winter was too cold for the garage, so we played ‘lounge music’

Thanks for listening! See you in 2026...

The Troubled Times: Smudge (2025)

“Nutso falling over kind of wonkiness from mid-winter” = Antony Milton

Listen

credits

The Troubled Times are:

Antony Milton – guitar, synths
Dave Edwards – guitar
David Heath – drums & percussion

Tracks 1-9 recorded July 2025; tracks 10-12 recorded August 2022
in Masterton, Aotearoa/NZ

about

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Experiments Under the Hills (2025)

Smalltown NZ free improv by Featherston Free Sound Ensemble

Paetumokai / Featherston,
Aotearoa / New Zealand,

credits

Guy Walker – turntable, cassette loops
Alex V – turntable, MIDI, sampler
Dave Edwards – bass, guitar, e-drum, harmonica

Recorded at the Bakehouse, October-November 2025

tracklist

1.	19-11-25 #1 orchestral overture 08:53
2.	27-11-25 #3 casino 03:39
3.	12-11-25 #4a static electricity 02:34
4.	12-11-25 #5c tremelo 03:48
5.	30-10-25 #2 Bulgarian 11:27
6.	27-11-25 #2 banjo 04:55
7.	12-11-25 #3b ukulele 03:27
8.	12-11-25 #5a EDM 03:51
9.	30-10-25 #3 guitar 04:27
10.	19-11-25 #4 towards the exit 03:25
11.	12-11-25 #3a orchestral reprise 04:53

Further listening:

“I was wide awake at 2.30am so listened to us on headphones in the dark in bed. I’m probably biased, but I think we sound bloody awesome” – Guy Walker

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Live at the Bakehouse 29/11/25

Smalltown free improv – live at @bakehousecollectivenz

“I was wide awake at 2.30am so listened to us on headphones in the dark in bed. I’m probably biased, but I think we sound bloody awesome” – Guy Walker

Paetumokai / Featherston,
Aotearoa / New Zealand,

29 November 2025

credits

Guy Walker – turntable, cassette loops

Alex V – turntable, MIDI, sampler

Dave Edwards – bass, guitar, e-drum, harmonica

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Featherston Free Sound Ensemble: First Experiments (2025)

Guy Walker – turntables, cassettes (right channel)
Dave Edwards – bass, guitar, e-drum (left channel)

Recorded at the Bakehouse, Featherston NZ, 18/09/25

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Homo Homini Lupus compilation (2025)

The Troubled Times (Antony Milton, Dave Edwards, David Heath) feature on this new compilation by Kentucky-based label Humanhood Recordings.

Listen

Available on limited edition double cassette.

No Maxim But Now

Other artists include KNURL, EMIL BEAULIEAU, COCK ESP, Aaron Rosenblum, Thaniel Ion Lee, Mike Shiflet, Joe Tunis and more…

Tracklist

1.	Straight Panic – Ethik 06:02
2.	See Through Buildings – In This Defeat 07:00
3.	KNURL – The Resulting Deprivation 10:02
4.	EMIL BEAULIEAU – Live At Six Mohonk, Part Two 07:46
5.	COCK ESP – Miami Advice Remix 01:18
6.	Takeshita – For All His Boys Locked In a Fucking Cell 10:00
7.	LACKTHROW – Saturday 225 pm jan 25 2025 09:56
8.	Rudolf Eb.er – Red wine on sweaty women’s soles (Rotwein auf verschwitzten Frauensohlen) 10:00
9.	156 – Sleeping With A Clear Conscience 05:59
10.	Aaron Rosenblum – Mother Day 03:02
11.	ILLUSION OF SAFETY – Fahrenheit 451 06:01
12.	Nicholas Maloney – Cast/Current 07:05
13.	Thaniel Ion Lee – Trapazoid 03:04
14.	Mike Shiflet – White Grass 05:34
15.	Walter Campbell – Xenophobe 04:18
16.	Nathaniel Hendrickson and Douglas Lucas – Blue Stream 01:10
17.	Joe+N – Study #1 01:53
18.	{AN} Eel – Plodding Subtextual 05:58
19.	The Troubled Times – No Maxim But Now 09:53
20.	Sycamore Willow – Spider In The Basement 04:57
21.	Limestone Ziggurat – Black Atlas 09:45

The Troubled Times: dDA (2025)

The Troubled Times‘ first recording session of 2025.

Dave on guitar and Antony on bass this time – a role reversal from our usual instruments – resulted in a distinctly different flavoured improv… a frenetic scratchiness.

Credits

David Heath – drums (2-7), bass (8)
Dave Edwards – electric guitars, harmonica (6)
Antony Milton – bass (1-7), vocal (6), drums (8)

Recorded 20 January 2025, in Masterton, Aotearoa/NZ

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7″ singles

2x new 7″ lathe cut singles:

Jovial Blade / Extant Body & Weight

“Some seriously scrambled dissonance. 80’s vocals hits 60’s electro/cut-up nonsense whilst smothering an ever mutating bassline […] the track contains more musical ideas in its 5 mins than some exhibit in some musical careers.” – Simon Baker, What Lies Beneath

(Dave solo – A-side is bass & electronics, B-side is clarinet & electronics)

and

The Troubled Times: Cellophane

Discs manufactured in NZ by Johnny Electric

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Ascension Band: Live 2004

This was 20 years ago today!

Ascension Band played at the Meatwaters Festival at Happy, in Wellington. We look so young… happy anniversary guys!

By auspicious coincidence, this morning (exactly 20 years on) I found an original DVD of the full performance (as well as discs of the 2005 gigs with the 18-piece imperial phase lineup).

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The Troubled Times: Boa

With all the subtlety of a peacock in a pigeon coop The Troubled Times return with a new album, dominated by the squeals of tortured amps and seriously tormented drums.

The Troubled Times also play live this month – in Wellington, at the Pyramid Club on 28 September!

Boa features inadvertent post-rock gliding that crashes and bursts into jagged flames; some kind of illicit NZ spaghetti pizza western folds in on itself to become a fractalized polaroid of a dessicated lizard.

This tendency toward excess doesn’t preclude the odd lapse into a mumbled ad hoc song or 2 but the focus here seems to be on ‘loud’, ‘fucked’ and ‘intense’.
The poor bloody neighbours…

Tape version available at troubledtimestapes.bandcamp.com

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