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.
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.
Music video from the album ‘South Island Sessions‘, set in 19th century New Zealand with an ecological theme. ‘The Ballad of William Knife’ was the name of the show we took to the Dunedin Fringe Festival in 2006.
If you’re a fan of World Music, Blues or Jazz, then ‘The Woods’ are a must have for your collection. With influences from John Lee Hooker to Pharaoh Sanders, from Africa to Peru, their music will take you some place else…
Out now!! the new collaboration with even more legendary & underground NZ artist Snake Beings.
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 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
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.
Whereas Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005showed a youthful kiwi fusion of songs with avant-garde spoken word and instrumental pieces, Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012 documents me in my late 20s and early 30s moving beyond these parameters.
My approach became less introspective and more journalistic – thanks to new influences from years spent living abroad in Australia, South Korea and Japan. New elements include the banjo, electronica, field recordings, multimedia performances, and touches of traditional Asian music. I also adopted the moniker Dave Black, to differentiate from my earlier works.
The third part of the trilogy, Other Islands: 2012-2018, documents my return to NZ via other Asia Pacific countries, and more recent works.
1861 revisited – my first pakeha (European) Edwards ancestors, Totara Jack and Mary, arrived in the South Island of New Zealand on board the Olympus and settled in Nelson.
John ‘Totara Jack’ Edwards
When I lived nearby a century and a half later,
I found the address where they’d lived, just below a spot on a hill that marks the geographical centre of NZ. To the north is Tasman Bay, and south are the foothills of the Southern Alps.
I jammed with South Island musicians; studied at the Nelson School of Music; played in Hokitika, Greymouth, Westport, Nelson, Blenheim, Lyttelton and Dunedin (as well as Brisbane, Australia); and recorded the sound of tui and makomako (native birds) in Nelson Lakes National Park.
Music by:
Dave Black – acoustic guitar, banjo, drums, harmonica, laptop, field recordings, tenor sax, and vocals
Recorded and mixed entirely on analogue equipment, and originally released on cassette in 2003, Loose Autumn Moans is the fourth album by New Zealander Dave Edwards (aka fiffdimension).
fiffdimension 