DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
Featherston, NZ – early 2022 – spontaneous compositions, two wet weekends in a row.
A sequel to Spastic Rhythms vol 1 (2021)
– a series of ‘quickfire’ DIY solo albums created in a couple of days each.
This one features interspecies guest collaboration with Oscar the huntaway.
released February 13, 2022
Dave Black – guitars, bass, banjo (2), clarinet (6), sanshin (10), loop pedal, e-drum
Oscar – vocal
Electric guitar improv duo – in collaboration with antonymilton.bandcamp.com
Recorded in Masterton, New Zealand, 26-09-21
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Antony Milton is a sound artist based in Masterton, New Zealand.
He has been active in the underground and experimental music scenes since the early 1990s.
Continue reading “w/ Antony Milton: Return of the Sun”Antony Milton is a sound artist based in Masterton, New Zealand.
He has been active in the underground and experimental music scenes since the early 1990s.
Continue reading “w/ Antony Milton: Return of the Sun”New live album!
With New Zealand in lockdown this might be the next best thing to an actual gig..
Track 1 recorded live at the Fringe Bar, Wellington NZ, 27-02-18
Tracks 2-7 recorded live at Escape Velocity, Featherston NZ, 10-03-18
As part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival
The Digitator – midi, laptop, vocal
Dave Black – bass, electric guitar
(*as picked by casual streaming listeners, based on % of tracks played in full minus % of tracks skipped… not necessarily the ones I would have picked – there’s little or no correlation between the “important” works and the parts other people like!).
Dave Edwards solo postpunk spoken word free improv guitar spasms (2002)
Compilation made in New Zealand, Okinawa, Western Australia, Indonesia and Fiji,,
by Dave Black with The Winter, The Electricka Zoo, Dr Emit Snake-Beings, Nat da Hatt, Campbell Kneale, Gamelan Sekar Puri, Gamelan Padhang Moncar, and Gamelan Taniwha Jaya
“The 20 song album covers traditional Javanese and Balinese gamelan, Asia–Pacific folk music, free jazz, and free noise…. If you have an open inquiring mind and love hearing a variety of sound, this is excellent. – Darryl Baser, muzic.net.nz“
An Australian novel for the ear – a double album recorded in Melbourne, Victoria,
and Sydney and Gosford New South Wales,
by Dave Black with Cylvi M, Mike Kingston and Francesca Mountfort (2005-2006)
“Dave Black’s debut release (and a re-birth, if you like, for David Edwards) is 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
Solo postpunk live at the old Bar Bodega, Wellington NZ, opening for Chris Knox
“If only I could play guitar like that… bastard” – Chris Knox
Palette-cleansing Dave Black solo electric guitar improv.
2021 compilation album curated by Campbell Kneale. He’s known for his noise music, paintings of cats, and as proprietor of the Miracle Room gallery in Featherston.
A sequel to his acclaimed 119-track Psi-solation compilation of music made in lockdown 2020.
Both albums are pay what you want via Campbell’s label, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon.
I contributed a new Dave Black piece, Outono 21.
Continue reading “PSI-SOLATION + 1 (one year on)”A 19th century unrequited love ballad – how anachronistic in the 2020s?
John Collie (1834-1893) – lyrics
Dave Edwards – banjo, harmonica, vocal
FAREWELL to thee , charming deceiver , No more will I crouch at thy gate ; I once was an earnest believer , And my folly I see when too late .
Continue reading “Farewell to Thee, Charming Deceiver”A quickfire Dave Black solo EP, recorded one summer morning, 24 January 2021
It adds banjo and electric drums to the 2020s Wairarapa DIY solo electric improv style begun in
Previously unreleased!
Dave Edwards dictaphone cassette recordings 2004, for spoken word and improvised guitar – a trip down a road not taken for New Zealand music.
These tracks were primitively recorded, not just obscure but completely unheard by anyone else, and seemed like raw unfinished demos at the time – but in hindsight may be the culmination of my 1997-2005 early period (a fusion of original songs, spoken word and free improv).
By 2004 my style was wordy, dense with allusions, and deliberately flouted not only verse/chorus structures but grammatical convention in parts; the influences here were literary modernists as much as music – eg Joyce, Beckett, Burroughs, Pynchon, Dylan (Thomas), and New Zealand poets James K Baxter, Alan Brunton and Hone Tuwhare. I was a postgrad journalism student that year, so partly it was spare time relief from the constraints of non-fiction writing.
My guitar heroes included British free improviser Derek Bailey and my Mississippi bluesman namesake David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards – and fellow explorers in the New Zealand underground music scene.
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The album is rounded out by an abrasive noise guitar, dictaphone and electric razor performance at the Bomb the Space Festival (the youtube clip is one of my few music videos to have over a thousand views… go figure),
and a pair of free improvisations, with percussionists Simon O’Rorke and Simon Sweetman, and Korean bassist Youjae Lee.
Next, needing a change of scenery, having pushed the singer/songwriter envelope as far as I could, and following some last ensemble collaborations with Ascension Band,
and The Winter
the next year I left the country on my OE and took a different approach again….
“So easy to get totally lost in this music, recommend for helping with your inner peace” – Andi Verse
Indo-Fijian inspired tropical devotional avant-garde instrumentals for keyboards, ukulele, dholak, duduk, harmonicas, DIY kitchen gamelan, and video.
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Snake Beings & Dave Black in Fiji |
This was one of the last in-person international collaborations from before the world ended… it’s got nothing to do with the pandemic.
It was recorded in Suva, Fiji, 2nd and 4th of November 2019.
The title ‘ruasagavulu’ means ‘twenty’ in Fijian, to kick off the new decade optimistically.
Our first duo recording was ‘Ngumbang‘ (2015) –
a fusion of several genres and a DIY manifesto – “Pick up the pieces and make them into something new, it’s what we do…”
the opening track from Ruasagavulu
by Dave Black & Snake-Beings
recorded in Suva, Fiji, 2nd November 2019
This short warmup improv is based on an Indian scale, inspired by Dr Emit Snake-Beings‘ travels to Kerala in India, and harmonium lessons in Suva.
There’s an Indian influence throughout the album, as several sections are based on drones and modal improv (rather than the chord changes)… though this is not a traditional Indian album, we’ve borrowed ideas to inform our own experiments.
The temple in the photo is Sri Siva Subramaniya in Nadi. It’s built in the Dravidian style from southern India, which is also found in Singapore and Malaysia.
In contrast to other Pacific Island countries, Fiji has a large – almost half – population of Indian descent. Indians came to Fiji in the 19th century, as indentured labourers to work the sugar cane plantations.
fiffdimension 