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

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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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The Troubled Times: Sparkle Tube (2025)

A return to the duo lineup of our earliest recordings (Antony Milton and Dave Edwards).

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CD-R edition

Limited edition physical copies of Sparkle Tube are available from Antony’s Grey Cyphers CDR label, along with other NZ artists including Rain Sleepers, Agentsss, L$D Fundraiser, CJA, Tower of Heaven, and more.

Old school cdr label out of back blocks New Zealand/Aotearoa releasing music by Agentsss and other lo-fi mystic wannabes
Antony Milton

About

Duo outing for The Troubled Times on this disk, ostensibly this is material Dave and Antony recorded while waiting for drummer David to show up for practice. He never showed up…
More of a weird improv noise album this one- except for the ‘musical’ bits..
Kind of dreamy.

(But you know what dreams are like, cruising one minute- terror the next.)

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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

Live 2022-24

Live solo electric tracks, 2022-2024

Recorded at:

the Miracle Room, Featherston NZ – 10 June 2022
Solway Showgrounds, Masterton NZ – 19 August 2023
2MBS Fine Music, Sydney, Australia – 20 October 2024

Dave Edwards – electric guitar, loop pedal, harmonica (2,5), e-drum (7), banjo (8), vocal, lyrics

John Collie (1834-1893) – lyrics (5-6)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Edwards (@fiffdimension)

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Radio Dolby 89.6FM interview

A big thank you to Radio Dolby 89.6FM for this podcast interview – hopefully an interesting audio documentary, and a chance to put the music (and stories behind it) over the years into context… here’s my life story so far, or at least a lot of the music parts!

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The Troubled Times: Live at the Pyramid Club 28/09/24

Thank you SkirtedRecords for the video snippets, and Pyramid Club for hosting, Termite Lounge and Christian Wolves (Campbell Kneale and Sarah Bingle) for playing, Thomas Lambert for running the show, and everyone who came to the gig on Saturday! We had a blast… hopefully it won’t be another six years til the next time in Wellington!

The full video of all three bands is available to stream (free) at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2262357709

The gig also marked the release of The Troubled Times’ new limited edition 7″ single Cellophane – only a couple of physical copies left so get in quick, or download from Bandcamp:

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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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The Margins: 21/04/24

“A virtual infusion of ‘ants-in-the-pants’ for the entomologically deficient.” –Antony Milton

Recent (2024) recordings from a new combination of old collaborators – Antony Milton and Dave Edwards (The Troubled Times) with Wellington free-improv legend Simon O’Rorke.

“The album blends Antony Milton‘s and my styles, with Dave Edwards often occupying a pivotal midpoint. It’s an exhilarating session.” – Simon O’Rorke

Credits

Simon O’Rorke– falcon software synth
Dave Edwards– guitar, bass, electro-drums, harmonica
Antony Milton– guitar, drums, microphonic feedback

Recorded at Fleet Street, Masterton, NZ/Aotearoa on 21 April 2024
Cover art by Antony Milton