South Island Sessions

1861 revisited – my first pakeha (European) Edwards ancestors, Totara Jack and Mary, arrived in the South Island of New Zealand on board the Olympus and settled in Nelson.

John ‘Totara Jack’ Edwards

When I lived nearby a century and a half later,

I found the address where they’d lived, just below a spot on a hill that marks the geographical centre of NZ. To the north is Tasman Bay, and south are the foothills of the Southern Alps.

I jammed with South Island musicians; studied at the Nelson School of Music; played in Hokitika, Greymouth, Westport, Nelson, Blenheim, Lyttelton and Dunedin (as well as Brisbane, Australia); and recorded the sound of tui and makomako (native birds) in Nelson Lakes National Park.

Music by:

Dave Black – acoustic guitar, banjo, drums, harmonica, laptop, field recordings, tenor sax, and vocals

Cylvi M – vocals & phat beatz

Hayden Gifkins / Matt Thornicroft – electric guitars

Frey – no-input mixing desk

Haz / Cookie – drums

The Winter: 2011

2011 – year of the Christchurch earthquakes, the Arab Spring, the Fukushima disaster, the shootings in Norway,the Queensland floods… and the Wellington (New Zealand) winter was colder than usual.
Acoustic improvisations on guitar, ukulele, banjo, clarinet, piano, harmonica and percussion by The Winter (Simon, Dave and Mike).

Liner notes by Dave

Continue reading “The Winter: 2011”

The Winter: Parataxes

The debut album by The Winter: instrumental improvisations from Wellington, New Zealand, 2003.  The band emerged fully formed on winter solstice day in June.

Builds from acoustic intimacy around the winter fireplace to the electric blizzard climax of ‘Parataxes 9‘.

“Derek Bailey on acid!” – Anthony Donaldson, Primitive Art Group

Photos by James Gilberd, from The Winter’s first gig at Photospace Gallery, Wellington NZ, August 2003.

Mike Kingston – cello, electronic composition (1,4,7), electric guitar (2), acoustic guitar and slide whistle (8)

Dave Edwards – acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica

Simon Sweetman – drums and percussion

The Winter are a Wellington based improvising trio, and Parataxes is their 1st release. It documents both acoustic and electric live sets that drift from eastern sounding cello led pieces to fairly extreme feed-backy noise. Continue reading “The Winter: Parataxes”

Mantis Shaped and Worrying

The difficult third album – recorded during a time of intense introspection in 2002. I locked myself in my room in Wellington for all of November with an analogue 4-track tape recorder, electric bass, guitars and harmonica and wrestled with the void.The results rapidly put an end to my promising New Zealand music career!

I spent days alone in my room with a borrowed 4-track cassette recorder (thank you Jeff Henderson) and bass guitar (thank you Simon O’Rorke). I’d never had a bass lesson so came up with my own improvised atonal punk/funk style.

The thin walls and neighbours below meant I couldn’t use an amp but could only play in headphones. This added to the sense of implosion. Likewise vocals couldn’t be done in a loud voice. I mostly eschewed effects pedals, and went more for dissonance than distortion. The technology was all analogue.

The result was Mantis Shaped and Worrying. It received mixed reviews, but was unlike anything else (as far as I was aware) at the time. File under: sui generis.

MSW

[send us your review]

Track one was a major composition in three movements entitled And in a who gets to who and who does and him:

Continue reading “Mantis Shaped and Worrying”