experimental
2005
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.
The results became After Maths & Sciences
2018
The main project for 2018 was Other Islands: 2012-2018;
The last five (of the 20) tracks were recorded in 2018 – each in a different genre:
Isa Lei, and the Yasawa islands, Fiji
This odd arrangement of a traditional Fijian folk song was inspired by hearing the real thing.
In May I visited the Yasawa Islands, to the northwest of Nadi and the main Fijian island Viti Levu.
The boat ride took 3 hours, and enjoyably scenic. Each of the many small islands we passed was different in some way but all stunning
The marine life included
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Part of Other Islands: 2012-2018
– recent highlights recorded in New Zealand, Western Australia, Fiji, Indonesia and Okinawa
Campbell Kneale & Dave Black
A Ton of Feathers is the first collaboration
by Campbell Kneale (guitar, analogue synth)
& 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…
Other Islands: 2012-2018
fiffdimension vol3
(see also Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 and Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012)
brings us into the current decade – with further wide-ranging experimentation and exploration sonically, temporally and geographically, in New Zealand, Western Australia, Indonesia, Okinawa (Japan), and Fiji.
by Dave Black (acoustic & electric guitars, banjo, harmonica, laptop, bass, tenor saxophone, field recordings, piano, ukulele, sanshin, saron, jublag, demung, vocal), with
Mike Kingston (charango, acoustic guitar),
Simon Sweetman (percussion),
Nat da Hatt (electric guitar, keyboards, banjo),
Emit Snake-Beings (banjo, vocal, percussion, flute, electronics),
the Digitator (electric drums, keyboards & loops),
Campbell Kneale (electric guitar, analogue synthesiser),
Cylvi M (vocal, field recordings, percussion, shakuhachi),
Blair Latham (bass clarinet),
Simon O’Rorke (keyboards),
Chris Prosser (violin),
Julie Bevan (acoustic guitar),
plus Indonesian gamelan ensembles led by Sofari Hidayat, Budi Putra, and Gareth Farr,
a song by my great-great-grandfather John Collie (1856),
and field recordings from Western Australia, Indonesia, Okinawa (Japan), and Fiji.
Featuring tracks from the albums
The Winter: Flying Visit (2012)
in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (1999/2014)
ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes (2010-15)
Ngumbang (2014-15)
The Winter: Exit Points (2015)
The Electricka Zoo (2017)
and previously unheard tracks.
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- The Winter: Flying Visit (2012)
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- 安里屋ユンタオーバードライブ Asadoya Yunta Overdrive (Okinawa), 2015
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- in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (1999/2014)
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- Ngumbang (2015)
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- The Winter: Exit Points (2015)
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- The Electricka Zoo (2017)
And hear the previous compilations
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.
Nat da Hatt – Harpsychord
The latest offering from Nat da Hatt, recorded in 2015-2016 in Kawaguchi City, Japan using an array of instruments, devices and machines including: a Zoom digital eight track recorder, A Gretsch Electromatic guitar and a Korg vocoder.
Harpsychord follows hot on the heels of 2015’s Volume V and Kleptomania
and his previous 2012 solo masterpiece, Twango
Nat da Hatt is a political refugee from New Zealand who has settled in Japan where he spends his days in a cave creating tone paintings on an array of devices and instruments including: guitar, thumb piano and a Korg vocoder.
He’s also collaborated with fiffdimension’s Dave Black on the 2014 explicitly Japanese psychedelic album
ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes
and guested on Ngumbang
as well as with American jaw-harp maestro Richard Morrison as Mezcla de Refresco
