Free improv
11 through the viewer 7
11th July 2019
Improvised acoustic guitar and video effects by Dave Black,
Featherston, NZ.
Solstice Shards 19
I spent the longest night of the year at home and improvised this:
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As I’d been doing mainly solo acoustic songs recently this was a palette cleansing electric improvisation from the other side of my coin.
I think of acoustic as yin and electric as yang forces.
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.
The Winter: Exit Points
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
The Winter at Pyramid Club, 2015
Thanks to Brent for the photos and to everyone who came along to the Pyramid Club on Thursday!
Ngumbang
Out now!! the new collaboration with even more legendary & underground NZ artist Snake Beings.
Ngumbang is the first collaborative album by two of New Zealand’s more unusual artist/musician/filmmaker/ethnomusicologists – performed on guitars, bass, banjo, percussion, saxophones, clarinets, harmonicas, synthesisers, Okinawan sanshin, ukulele, violin, loop pedal, piano, drums and spoken word. The album was recorded in and near Auckland, New Zealand in 2014–2015 and includes live performances at Vitamin S and the Audio Foundation.
Emit Snake-Beings, who over several decades has travelled intensively in Spain, Holland, the Middle East, Mexico, America and Japan, is a New Zealand / British experimental filmmaker and musician who has produced over 40 independently released film soundtrack CDs and made a number of short experimental and narrative films in Spain, U.K. and New Zealand. www.snakebeings.co.nz
Dave Black, originally from Taranaki and active since the late 90s on the NZ underground music scene, began by fusing acoustic songs, noisy postpunk, spoken word and avant-garde improvisation – and has diversified further from there. Notable performances include the award-winning 14-piece Ascension Band, appearing as an international artist at the Liquid Architecture Festival in Brisbane, Australia, and teaching a thousand Okinawan school students to perform a haka. www.fiffdimension.com
‘Ngumbang’ is Read the rest of this entry »
