1856 to 2026 – DIY outsider music, from Aotearoa NZ and beyond
Live 4th May 2019, at Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon, in Masterton NZ.
Solo guitar & harmonica version of track http://www.fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/track/summer-skin
Originally recorded in Wellington NZ, September 2003, for the album ‘Loose Autumn Moans‘, with a mini string section of Mike Kingston on cello and Sam Prebble (RIP) on violin. It also appears on the Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 compilation.
4th May 2019 live solo version at the Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon.
This song was originally recorded in June 2001, at Thistle Hall, Wellington. It was the opening track of the album The Marion Flow.
Since last year I’ve been getting back into playing solo acoustic. Here’s a 6 March 2019 version of ‘the Marion Flow‘:
It appears on the Live 2019 album:
Originally recorded in New Plymouth in 1999, it became the title track of my second album:
The 1999 recording had quite a different vibe – spoken word delivery, electric guitars panned left & right, and Paul Winstanley playing a cymbal through a pitch shifter, turning it into a deep sea gong sound.
On other occasions it became a rock riff, based around just an E note and its octave.
I was surrounded by wider & weirder music too. I moved to Wellington and found a kiwi avant-garde scene with free jazz, noise, and theatre gallore. We eventually finished The Marion Flow album in 2001, after recording sessions at Thistle Hall.
Both the live electric and acoustic versions appear on the
Two sides of a coin!
The lyrics are some of my favourite. They were scribbled in a notebook sometime in the late 90s. I was digesting the influence of literary modernism (eg lines like ‘yea take in that wake’ a shout out to James Joyce, using nouns as verbs and vice versa, and other general flouting of grammatical rules).
Taranaki and its coastlines inspired much of the atmosphere.
Continue reading “The Marion Flow, March 2019”January 2019, looking for a new sound and a new project – after completing Other Islands: 2012-2018.
It’s a poem by John Collie (1834-1893), my great-great-grandfather
from his book Poems and Lyrics in the English and Scotch Dialects, published in Scotland in 1856
John Collie emigrated to New Zealand in 1858. This poem seems to anticipate his leaving Scotland forever, to start a new life in a new country on the opposite side of the world.
In May I performed it live on Wairarapa TV.
Lyrics
Continue reading “The Land of My Youth (by John Collie, 1856), January 2019 demo”
The main project for 2018 was Other Islands: 2012-2018;
The last five (of the 20) tracks were recorded in 2018 – each in a different genre:
A Ton of Feathers is the first collaboration
by Campbell Kneale (guitar, analogue synthesiser)
& Dave Black (bass, electric toothbrush, video).
Made in Featherston, Wairarapa NZ in 2018.
New Zealand folk music, in the tradition of Birchville Cat Motel, the Dead C, and Len Lye.
This excerpt appears on the compilation Other Islands: 2012-2018, and is part of a longer piece, due for release in 2020.
Our main news of 2017 was The Electricka Zoo‘s debut album. music.net.nz called it “a totally original, mind-warping album”.
It’s not too late for your best-album-of-2017 lists, so get your copy today (just click the ‘buy’ button above… yes we’re still more interested in ‘the album’, as a unified artform, with a theme and structure, rather than streaming playlists).
Our next big project is a show in the NZ Fringe Festival – watch this space.
Meanwhile this year we made some progress on social media, reaching the modest milestones of 200 likes for fiffdimension and 100 likes for the Electricka Zoo on Facebook.
We also Continue reading “2017 roundup”
fiffdimension 