New Zealand music
Spastic Rhythms vol1
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
Glimpses of Utopia (2020)
Articulation Incommunicate (2004)
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.
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- Simon Sweetman
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- Youjae Lee
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- Simon O’Rorke
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….
Read the rest of this entry »
Ruasagavulu
‘Ruasagavulu‘ (made in Fiji
by Dave Black & Dr Emit Snake-Beings)
is now a free/name-your-price download – enjoy!
Thanks for your interest, and happy Matariki if you’re in NZ…
“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.
Further listening
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…”
Ruasagavulu
Out now – the new album
by Dave Black & Dr Emit Snake-Beings
Made in Fiji
“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.
|
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.
Further listening
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…”
Gar mar par da nee sa
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.
The following videos are made in India, courtesy of www.snakebeings.co.nz
2002: self-isolation before it was cool?
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 cassette recorder.The results rapidly put an end to my promising New Zealand music career!
In 2002, a year whose digits are an anagram of this one’s, I locked myself in my room for a month of self-isolation.
It had nothing to do with a pandemic!
It was just me living in Wellington and looking for a way to follow up The Marion Flow (part 2).
I was moving further away from conventional 3min song formats into the avant-garde. Read the rest of this entry »
Fiji 1976, by Alastair Edwards
Film footage by my father, Alastair Edwards, in Nadi and around Viti Levu in 1976.
It’s from a couple of years before I was born.
There was no sound, so I’ve added a soundtrack from Ruasagavulu, which Dr Emit Snake-Beings and I recorded in Suva decades later.
My Dad’s interest in film (then video) and photography was one of the key influences on my own travel and videomaking. He was doing this long before youtube or instagram!
I miss you Dad…
Ruasagavulu – with Snake Beings in Fiji
Made in Suva, Fiji – the new album by Dave Black & Dr Emit Snake-Beings
“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.
This was one of the last in-person international collaborations from before the world ended.
The title ‘ruasagavulu’ means ‘twenty’ in Fijian, to kick off the new decade.
recorded in Suva, Fiji, 2nd November 2019
Further listening
2019 roundup
At the end of the decade, and looking for a way to follow up the eclectic Asia-Pacific Odyssey of Other Islands: 2012-2018, I stripped things back down to the solo acoustic format of my early years with Live 2019.
The set, at Wairarapa TV in Masterton, New Zealand, was streamed live on the internet on 4th of May 2019.
For the past couple of years I’ve been living in a small town and don’t get to as many gigs as I used to… so here was an opportunity to use 21st century technology to play ‘virtually’ everywhere.
On the other hand musically this was closer to a traditional folk/singer-songwriter set than I’d done for quite a while. I eschewed dissonant improv, multitracking, live backing musicians, field recordings, or electronic trickery this time, and used just acoustic guitar, banjo, and harmonica (and a few seconds of wah pedal on ‘Eastern’).
The set was followed by an interview.
I also released a companion album to Live 2019 – its stroppier lo-fi postpunk ‘official bootleg’ predecesor Live 1999. This was recorded on cassette 20 years (or half my lifetime) ago, when I opened for Chris Knox at Bar Bodega in Wellington NZ last millennium:
Live 1999
I started and finished both live sets on the same two songs, to show continuity and evolution.
It’s been quite a journey in between!
Other projects
My other 2019 works in progress included
* experiments with animated visuals and electric improvisations (the ‘yang’ flipside of the deliberately toned down ‘yin’ Live 2019)
* a duo with Emit Snake-Beings, for an as-yet-untitled sequel to Ngumbang, coming in 2020 (we had a recording session in Suva, Fiji, of all places);
* a couple of informal jam sessions with the Electricka Zoo (which has otherwise been on hold since last year); ( http://www.soundcloud.com/darrel-hannon/jamming-with-dave)
* and I continued to adapt the 19th century book ‘Poems & Lyrics by John Collie’, which I’d learned was written by my Scottish great-great-grandfather in 1856 before he came to NZ. Three of his poems featured on Live 2019, with more in the pipeline.
Read the rest of this entry »The Marion Flow (part 2, Wellington 2001)
“It’s lo-fi, organic and about as eclectic as one could manage. Kind of reminds me of Nick Cave if he had grown up in Timaru. No pretentious American accents or catch phrase choruses, just a bunch of people making music. A little beauty!” – NZ Musician, August/September 2002
The Marion Flow was originally a longer album which spanned recordings from New Plymouth in 1999 and Wellington in 2001.
This page is for the 2001 Wellington recordings: produced by Paul Winstanley, & featuring Chris O’Connor (drums), Chris Palmer (electric guitars), Simon O’Rorke (percussion), and more. Recorded at Thistle Hall, Wellington, 2001, and mixed by Joe Callwood.
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- Paul Winstanley
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- Chris Palmer, recording The Marion Flow (2001)
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- Simon O’Rorke
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- Chris O’Connor
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- Dave Edwards, 2004
For the earlier 1999 New Plymouth sessions see The Marion Flow (part 1, Taranaki);
By the time the opportunity arose to finish recording the Marion Flow I’d been thoroughly immersed in the Wellington free jazz and avant-garde music scene, and was very fortunate to have help from some of the top players there. I’d never studied music at school or been in a conventional band, and was out of my depth technically… so working around my limitations became a spark to creativity.
“Edwards’ music is often a sculpture rather than a melodic composition. Within this chosen form, amongst all the writings rantings & poetry there’s much difficult pleasure to be had for the musically adventurous.” – Brent Cardy, Real Groove, July 2002
In 1999, aged 20, I’d left New Plymouth, a large rural town, where I grew up, and moved to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, where I’d been born and where my early pakeha settler ancestors had lived in the 19th century. The Marion Flow reflects this journey, geographically, sonically and spiritually.
I’ve now reissued the two halves of the album separately – to emphasise the sense of time and place, and stylistic evolution, and to re-present them more concisely for the short-attention-span 21st century.
