Tag: postpunk

Quietism (2024)

Solo improvisations for electric guitar, bass and electric drums – using single-take overdubs to create a virtual trio.

By Dave Edwards– early 2024, summertime in NZ – start of the fiffdimension 2nd quarter-century.


Tracks 1-3 and 12 recorded early January 2024 – the rest recorded 6th February 2024, in Featherston, Aotearoa / New Zealand

These are the first new recordings made since the 25-year-spanning 2CD compilation

The title ‘Quietism‘ refers not so much to the sound, but to the absence of vocals – or any reference to current news or politics. Part of the fiffdimension aesthetic is a certain wilful irrelevance, and ignoring of trends.

The last track ‘Hypnopompia’ (waking up) experiments with a possible new ambient style.

Continue reading “Quietism (2024)” →

The Troubled Times: Another (****ing) Sunday

The first physical CD by The Troubled Times (Antony Milton, Dave Edwards, David Heath),

Released as part of the ‘Another Sunday‘ series of CDs:
anothersunday.bandcamp.com

Fizzy dreamy shambolic ramblings from the Wairarapa‘s dustiest garage.
Instant songs committed to disk for posterity.

credits

Continue reading “The Troubled Times: Another (****ing) Sunday” →

The Troubled Times: Elevate

Antony Milton – electric guitar Dave Edwards – bass David Heath – drums

A contrasting companion piece to the forthcoming ‘Another Sunday‘ CD (all but the last track recorded during the same session),  ‘Elevate’ is a thoroughly kinetic affair bursting with energy and ecstatic passion.

Avant jazz meets squealing rambunctious noise. A frenetic blast down to the end of the driveway and back. The set finishes with a tribute to Albert Ayler.

What more could you want? (well there’s The Troubled Times’ live debut coming up on 15 July….)

credits

releases July 15, 2023

Read more: The Troubled Times: Elevate

Tracks 1-4 recorded 28 May 2023
‘Festive Spirit’ recorded 18 December 2022

in Antony’s garage, Masterton, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Photo by Dave, at the Remutaka ranges

w/ Antony Milton: The Troubled Times

For this EP The Troubled Times is Dave Edwards and Antony Milton.
Raw loud Improvised pluck and drone recorded in the between Covid lockdowns.

credits

released June 26, 2022

Recorded on a windy rainy Sunday in Antony’s garage in Masterton.
Guitar/Bass –Dave Edwards
Guitar/Keyboard/Vocs –Antony Milton.

For the first full length release from this duo, which pre-dates the name ‘The Troubled Times’ please visit fiffdimension.bandcamp.com

Escape Velocity: the Electricka Zoo live

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

credits

The Digitator – midi, laptop, vocal
Dave Black – bass, electric guitar

www.fiffdimension.com/the-electricka-zoo

ilhas Atlânticas

This track is dedicated to my great-great-grandfather Manuel Bernard.

Manuel José Bernard (1847-1928)

He was born in 1847 in Ponta Delgada, Flores Island, Azores, Portugal.

It appeared as the last track on Spastic Rhythms vol 1 (2021), in a Dave Black solo rendition of a piece by the Electricka Zoo.

It originally appeared on The Electricka Zoo (2017), and on the Other Islands: 2012-2018 compilation. It’s based around a (non-diatonic) Cmaj7 – Amaj7 pattern, with a bossa nova rhythm.

The words are in (beginner) Portuguese:

Eu gosto de falar

no meus ancestrais

de as ilhas Atlânticas

Madeiras e Açores

Portugal is the westernmost country in Europe, with its back to it geographically and culturally. It was the edge of the known world for Europeans until the Age of Discovery. The Azores islands are even further west.

As a teenager, Manuel Bernard stowed away on a passing American whaling ship.

From a remote island in the Atlantic ocean, he ended up on an equally remote island in the Pacific – on the opposite side of the world, in Wellington, New Zealand.

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Articulation Incommunicate (2004)

Previously unreleased! 

Dictaphone cassette recordings, Wellington NZ, 2004

Spoken word and improvised guitar; a journey down the road not taken for New Zealand music.

Dave Edwards – acoustic guitar, harmonica, dictaphone, electronics, electric guitar (11), violin (12), vocal

w/
Youjae Lee – bass (12)
Simon O’Rorke – percussion (12)
Simon Sweetman – ukulele, toys, percussion (15)

The tracks were primitively recorded, based on words scribbled in notebooks, unheard by anyone else (until 2020), and seemed like unfinished demos at the time; but in hindsight represent the culmination of my early period (a lo-fi postpunk fusion of songs, spoken word and free improv – www.fiffdimension.com/1997-2005).

By 2004 my style was wordy; the influences here were literary modernists as much as music – eg Burroughs, Joyce, Beckett, Pynchon, Dylan (Thomas), and NZ poets James K Baxter, Alan Brunton and Hone Tuwhare. My guitar heroes included free improviser Derek Bailey, my Mississippi bluesman namesake David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, and the kiwi musicians found in my bandcamp collection – www.bandcamp.com/fiffdime

‘Articulation Incommunicate’ includes an abrasive electric guitar, dictaphone and electric razor performance at the Bomb the Space Festival (youtu.be/8UFpX7catqw – one of my very few music videos to have over a thousand views… go figure…

After the filmshoot (2002)

Dave Edwards solo cassette tracks, in Wellington NZ, 2002.
Wellington, New Zealand

 

Hey so the new (2020) album Ruasagavulu is out!

(go there, like, share etc)…

 

& in the meantime, until the next new project, here’s one from the vault:

 
1.
After the Filmshoot (take 1) 03:25
 
 
2.
Interlude: the sociopolitical context 00:51
 
 
 
3.
Sleep/Grease 02:57
 
 
 
4.
Etude, for electric saxophone 03:16
 
 
 
5.
Working Like a Fountain in the Slender Morning Chill 05:11
 
 
 
6.
Interlude: les paul tapdance 01:36
 
 
 
7.
After the Filmshoot (take 2) 04:51
 
 
 
8.
WLAF reprise 03:32

In 2002, a year whose digits are an anagram of this one’s,  I was living in Wellington (New Zealand’s capital, and my birthplace), looking for a way to follow up the almost-success of The Marion Flow (part 2).

But I was moving further away from conventional 3min song formats into the avant-garde.

This is the second largely solo album I made in 2002.

Continue reading “After the filmshoot (2002)” →