2CD compilation 1998​-​2023

Celebrating 25 years of fiffdimension!

Electric (yang) / Acoustic (yin)

A collection of short tracks by Dave Edwards and collaborators.

Double disc collection of more than two decades’ worth of live and studio-recorded tunes by Dave Edwards, who you may have heard recently as part of The Troubled Times with Antony Milton. It’s quite a diverse listen!

You get some concise and catchy pop songs, some full-on rockers, banjo excursions, improv freak-out, poetry, acoustic blues, folk songs, scrambled noise… there’s something here for everybody. A good intro to Dave’s dauntingly deep discography.”

Howard Stelzer, Noisy Bandcamp.

Produced by Antony Milton; and features Paul Winstanley, Chris O’Connor, Simon O’Rorke,Chris Palmer, Sam Prebble, Mike Kingston, Francesca Mountfort, Damian Stewart, Emit Snake-Beings, Nat da Hatt, Steve Duffels, and Oscar (the dog).

2CD double album. 35 tracks spanning 25 years. Comes in gatefold card case with full colour photography by Jechtography and James Gilberd. Includes download of the digital album.

Review 

Electric (Yang)/Acoustic (Yin) boasts some wildly different tracks; short instrumentals (the guitar and percussion of King Street Boogie, the piano and birdsong of Tui and Grey Sky, the guitar, rain, and bucket- possibly oboe too- of Classical Rain Bucket), song-length instrumentals (the gorgeous and floaty Kalbarri Coastline, the spaced-out psychedelia of Shuffling The TarotOctober Rings sweet little guitar melody being countered by its evil twin sowing dissent and discord), spoken word over free-forming instruments (After The Filmshoot describing either a spiritual experience or very good drugs… or both, @Bomb The Space sounding like a guitar being attacked, Ornery Return Cravings spoken over sheer instrumental chaos), and occasionally, songs too (the stripped-back post-punk glory of Tony Was Here, the slithery, smoky, speakeasy feel of Cafes In ConversationInverno creeping in like a fever-dream of The Cramps, and the beautiful, emotionally-charged Paetumokai (Pua pua i te Koanga)). Dave Edwards is a thoughtful and talented writer, composer, and performer. This double album ably demonstrates that, from the soft, delightful guitar ramblings on Stromatolites, to Wealth And Riches that sounds for all the world like a battle to the death between a drumkit and a horde of toy robots.

“He doesn’t seem to so much want to push boundaries, as to act like he’s never heard of boundaries in the first place. At times soft and beautiful, at others dark and jarring, it makes for fascinating listening.” – Peter Malthus, muzic.nz

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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)

Melbourne, VIC, Australia 2005

…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.

 

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The results became After Maths & Sciences

Continue reading “2005”

After Maths & Sciences (Australia, 2005)

An Australian novel for the ear, recorded in Melbourne VIC and Gosford NSW in 2005 – by kiwis.

Part 1: Melbourne and Gippsland (VIC)

Music by Dave Black – banjo, dictaphone, laptop, acoustic guitar, harmonica, drums / Cylvi M – phat beatz, shaker, shakuhachi / Francesca Mountfort – cello / Mike Kingston – acoustic guitar / various Australians


2006 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

“After Maths & Sciences was recorded by Dave Black (some may know him as David A. Edwards, and if you don’t, then check his website, or the compilation of earlier recordings,Gleefully Unknown 1997-2005) in two parts: From May-July of 2005 in Melbourne, during the winter….

About

By 2005 I needed a change from Wellington, and bought a ticket to Melbourne – the first leg of my ‘big OE’.

I lived in Melbourne (in Brunswick) for six months, and had my mind blown by the sheer size of Australia, and exposure to new ideas and sounds – eg Aussie hip-hop, Middle Eastern music, and the noisier local birdlife. I loved the wide open spaces and the eucalyptus scent.

I didn’t have a guitar with me, so bought a banjo instead (which I still have). I also began to incorporate field recordings and laptop electronica. And rather than writing from within myself, I became more of an observer.

I released After Maths & Sciences (my last CDR for years, before the format became obsolete) under the name Dave Black (adopting my maternal grandfather’s surname), to signal this change of approach. The title suggests the ‘aftermath’ of my life in Wellington, and experimenting with a new approach.

For an overview of this new artistic era see the Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012 compilation.

Tracklist

1.22-6-2005 04:23
2.The Greenhough 05:19
3.Melbourne Streets 02:10
4.hic et ups e vol turface 02:43
5.O Henry Ending 03:29
6.Wealth & Riches (Mt Eliza) 07:13
7.In Gippsland 03:26
8.Moreland Station, Coburg 02:49
9.Repent 03:31

Part 2: Sydney and Gosford (NSW)

“…And then from December of last year to January of 2006 in New South Wales; summer.”

On a second visit to Australia for Christmas and New Year 2005/06 – this time to New South WalesCylvi M and I created more Australian soundscapes (including political themes, such as the Cronulla Riots and burgeoning awareness of climate change, as well as bird and insect sounds).

Tracklist

1.Welcome to Sydney 01:05
2.Hot Weather (a premonition) 03:19
3.Karaoke Queen 00:59
4.BBQ post-Cronulla riots 03:39
5.Cylvi M – Morning in Gosford 04:57
6.New Year’s Eve 2005/06 07:42
7.Hot Weather (@ Lines of Flight Festival 2006, Dunedin NZ) 03:45
8.Slowing Cicadas 02:23

Part 3: Brisbane and Rockhampton (QLD)

Later in 2006, on a third visit to Australia, and thanks to Lawrence English, I performed at Liquid Architecture Festival in Brisbane (unrecorded).

Returning to NZ, I then played a set at Lines of Flight in Dunedin – performing a live soundtrack to video footage I’d taken in Queensland. These Australian videos were some of my first uploads to www.youtube.com/@fiffdimension – now one of the platform’s longest-running channels!

Review by Simon Sweetman

“The album is a travel-document; a response to relocation, a series of sound-sketches and sonic-manipulations designed to confront (and possibly unhinge) the listener; a reflection of several journeys – an aural diary of events from time spent in Australia, evoking the mood of the place (geographically) and the mood of the time (politically).San Shimla’s occasional guitar, Francesca Mountfort’s cello and Cylvi Manthyng’s percussion and shakuhachi (a Japanese woodwind) support Dave Black.

“As Dave Edwards he has explored fuzzy-punk, free-jazz, spoken word, alternative-folk and demented pop, primarily using guitar, harmonica and voice; sometimes with a band or a backing cast at least – often as a solo artist(e). Here, as Dave Black, the palette is broadened: banjo, drums and the use of a laptop computer (triggering sounds via Fruityloops, Audacity and Audition programs) add extra textures. During 2005 Edwards studied journalism, his use of dictaphone and laptop on this recording see him reaching outside of music for influences to use in new contexts.

“The collages that form the pieces on After Maths & Sciences are modern-day field recordings, contemporary anxieties are explored (a typically frank Australian is overheard at a train station lamenting public transport in the wake of the London bombings). The juxtaposition of banjo (an instrument prominent in the work of Doc Boggs, Earl Scruggs and many of the earliest artists featured on the iconic U.S. Library Of Congress field recordings made by Alan Lomax and Harry Smith) helps to recontextualise the snapshots of modern-day Australia. And the name that Edwards has chosen, Dave Black, as well as having relevance within his family history, becomes a nice reference to the passing of The Man In Black (Johnny Cash) and various (possibly mythic) country-playing banjo pickers. For this is “country” music, though perhaps not as we know it. Birdsong, despite computer filtering, sits pure alongside the country’s archaic (near-redneck) political views. Abrasive bursts of white-noise are channelled via a throbbing electro pulse (Kraftwerk goes on safari sabbatical?).

“There are New Zealand artists working in this medium (Montano, Seht, Audible 3) combining concrete poetry, field recordings, found-sounds and electro-acoustic manipulations to sit as aural wallpaper, but Dave Black’s debut release (and a re-birth, if you like, for David Edwards) is an actual document – as much a post-modern piece of Performance Journalism as it is a static batch of “songs” or tracks, After Maths & Sciences is a pleasing challenge of an album.  It lives up to the cliché of presenting something new with each listen,”- Simon Sweetman

Sequel: Perth, Kalgoorlie and Kalbarri (WA)

From 2012-2014 I moved to Australia a second time, and spent 2 1/2 years living in Perth, in Western Australia. Recordings from that period became the album in a Wildflower State.

Live 2022-24

I’ve also revisited ‘the lucky country’ a couple of other times since. In 2024 I played a gig in Sydney, alongside Sydneysiders Nick Dan, Anthony Guerra and Monica Brooks. The recordings are included on Live 2022-24.