Snake Beings

Dr Emit Snake-Beings – founder of the Hamilton Underground Film Festival, composer, musician and electrical shrine maker – is a New Zealand / British experimental filmmaker and musician. He 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.

His music includes two duo albums with fiffdimension:

Ngumbang (Huia, 2014/15)

and

Ruasagavulu (Fiji, 2019/20)

He also appears on

Gamelan Dimensi Kelima (Indonesia)

His other projects include:

www.snakebeings.co.nz

Ngumbang

The first collaboration with even more legendary & underground NZ artist Snake Beings.

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About

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 title ‘Ngumbang’ is an Indonesian word that refers to the slight difference in tuning between a pair of gamelan instruments, which gives gamelan music its shimmering quality.

The album name reflects a shared interest in ethnomusicology and experimentation, and the almost-but-not-quite-equivalent approaches of these two artists.

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

Tracklist

1.	Huia Vortex (feat. Nat da Hatt) 03:56
2.	The Feathered Serpent Sings Again 05:13
3.	Illbelly Gritts 03:57
4.	Watching a Painting Melt 01:47
5.	さくらさくら (Japanese folk song) – live at the Audio Foundation 04:52
6.	Pig in the Bamboo 01:47
7.	Live at Vitamin S (#1.5) 04:37
8.	Pick up the Pieces (after the gig) 04:48
9.	Pick up the Pieces (after the jam session) 04:45
10.	Ornery Return Cravings 02:40
11.	kuningan dan perunggu (Indonesian brass and bronze) 02:50
12.	So Long Notes 06:01

Further Listening

Continue reading →

The Road to Bogandoor

Election night 2013 in Australia mix –

At the time I lived in Perth, WA.

And Australia Day music video from an unfinished Aussie album… enjoy!

Music by Nat da Hatt & Dave Black with Snake Beings, video by Dave Black and Cylvi Manthyng

See also – our first Australian album, After Maths & Sciences,

and Dave Black & Nat da Hatt in Japan: ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes

Dada Songwriting: Rejection dryrot ripple Gombage

Dave and Cylvi contributed to Postmoderncore‘s first volume of Dada Songwriting Compilation, Rejection dryrot ripple Gombage.

Condo Encyclopedia coalseam egg 2:02

by Uneasy Chairs (USA, guitar) / T4x0n0m13s (España, bass + distortion pedal) / Dave Black (NZ, banjo) / Cylvi Manthyng (NZ, shaker)

Download entire album / View album at archive.org

Each contributor created two mins of raw sound – a single track recorded live with no post-processing. After each set of four tracks arrived, they were blindly put together to create each track – as & when they arrived in Corporal Tofulung’s inbox.
The title of the album was created by writing the 40 contributed words on individual pieces of paper & drawing them randomly out of a bucket. Continue reading “Dada Songwriting: Rejection dryrot ripple Gombage” →

Pyramid Power festival 10-13 December

I’ll be performing on day 4 of the
PYRAMID POWER!
Festival of experimental music and art
10-13 December 2014 at the Pyramid Club

Pyramid Power festival, Wellington, 10-13 December 2014

The SOUND & LIGHT EXPLORATION SOCIETY is pleased to present PYRAMID POWER!!!!
A four day spectacular of MUSIC and ART of staggering proportions!!!!

Sound experiments, psychedelic jazz, hotwired synths, free improvisation, noise, experimental films, and more!

Continue reading “Pyramid Power festival 10-13 December” →

East to West: Japan

Back in April we performed Dave Black & Snake Beings: East to West at the Audio Foundation in Auckland. Here’s a first excerpt from the show, which took the audience all the way from NZ to Portugal. This chapter is set in mainland Japan, and takes in Kyoto, Mount Fuji, and 1990s Tokyo. The soundtrack was performed live.

We’ve recorded an album’s worth of material, which is now available: Ngumbang

www.fiffdimension.com www.snakebeings.co.nz

In the meantime for other original music inspired by Japan, and more Japanese mountaineering, see ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes by Dave Black & Nat da Hatt.

Sam Prebble, RIP

Sad this week to hear of the early passing of Sam Prebble (aka Bond Street Bridge).

Our condolences to Sam’s family and friends.

He was a friend I hadn’t seen for a few years as I’ve been living abroad, but he played violin on ‘Loose Autumn Moans‘ and I’d always hoped to work with him again.

I loved the historical turn his recent music was taking.

Definitely a loss to NZ music as well as a personal tragedy to lose him before his time.

https://bondstreetbridge.bandcamp.com/

https://fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/album/loose-autumn-moans

in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway (part 1, 1999)

A few years ago I wrote a chapter of Jazz Aotearoa, a book about New Zealand jazz music history, discussing the free improvisation and avant-garde jazz scene in Wellington at the turn of the millennium.

in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway is a collection of improvised instrumental music with some of the musicians in that scene, from the point of view of my own attempts as an untrained outsider to fit in with these advanced jazz players – including Jeff Henderson, Blair Latham , Paul Winstanley, Dan Beban, Julie Bevan and more.

The title is a reference to Simon’s house on Norway Street, where the recordings took place. The ‘non idiomatic idiom’ suggests the paradox that improvising non-idiomatically (eg in an original personal style without reference to any genre – playing neither jazz, nor rock, blues, reggae, classical etc) is an idiom in itself.

It was recorded in Wellington in two halves, in 1999

Listen

Simon O’Rorke – percussion

Paul Winstanley – synth bass
Blair Latham – alto sax
Jeff Henderson – clarinet
Bridget Kelly – tenor sax
Dan Beban – electric guitar
Dave Edwards – electric and acoustic guitars

and 2014, to show an evolution.

Simon O’Rorke – synthesisers

Blair Latham – bass clarinet
Julie Bevan – acoustic guitar
Michael Hall – alto sax
Chris Prosser – violin
Dave Edwards – bass, electronics, tenor sax

In 2024 Simon O’Rorke struck up a new collaboration with Dave Edwards, this time in the Wairarapa, as a trio with Antony Milton named The Margins:

Background

Free improvisation is a genre of music with a self-explanatory name. Nothing is planned in advance, and the performers create the music on the spot by responding to what the others are doing in that moment.

Continue reading →

dAdApApA: Waiting for the Drummer (1999)

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About

A companion to The Marion Flow, recorded in 1999 by the same lineup who provided that album’s longest (and least conventionally song-based track, pointing the way towards the increasingly radio-unfriendly Mantis Shaped and Worrying), “Lucifer Directing Traffic (at 3AM)”

Recording engineer Paul Winstanley, head of the excellent, now San Francisco-based avant-garde music label Eden Gully recalls it thus:

“after recording tracks for The Marion Flow at Wafer HQ in New Plymouth an ad hoc group of associated locals assembled to record for several sessions of improvised rock/noise deconstruction. really, the only rock references here come from the guitars, with the sputtering synth, air-sucking turntables, didgeridoo and sundry toys providing layers of surreal abstraction. throw in some spoken word and a special guest appearance by N.P. record mogul Brian Wafer on vacuum cleaner – and the dAdApApA nova had blazed and fizzled in the blink of an eye.

“it wasn’t until several years later after the master mixes had been lost, partially recovered and then rediscovered intact again that “Waiting for the Drummer’ was given a final mastering and released as a CDR on EdenGully. it’s been a long strange journey…..”

credits

released 01 August 2006 on Eden Gully as EG15

Fiff Dimension Dave – guitars, spoken word and furbie / Speed Cook – turntables and recording / Pal Diddly – synth and pithy observations / The Digitator – guitar, didgeridoo / BWafer – vacuum cleaner and coffees

Tracklist

1.	just in time for christmas 09:03
2.	making merry 09:00
3.	singing and drinking blood 08:31
4.	elves are farting bodies 14:10
5.	groan in extra stuffing 12:19
6.	smashed robots litter the pine 05:34
7.	an orgy of turkey gobble 08:04

Mezcla de Refresco

Mezcla de Refresco is a new duo featuring Nat da Hatt (who also performs with fellow kiwi Dave Black on their Japanese psychedelic duo album ネオン列車の風景 Neon Train Landscapes)

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Richard Morrison: jaw harp, Korg synthesizer, samples

Nathan Palmer: guitar, Korg vocoder, samples, thumb piano

Mixed and engineered by Nathan Palmer. Continue reading “Mezcla de Refresco” →