“Double disc collection of more than two decades’ worth of live and studio-recorded tunes by Dave Edwards, who you may have heard recently as part of The Troubled Times with Antony Milton. It’s quite a diverse listen!
“You get some concise and catchy pop songs, some full-on rockers, banjo excursions, improv freak-out, poetry, acoustic blues, folk songs, scrambled noise… there’s something here for everybody. A good intro to Dave’s dauntingly deep discography.”
2CD double album. 35 tracks spanning 25 years. Comes in gatefold card case with full colour photography by Jechtography and James Gilberd. Includes download of the digital album.
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.
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…
“Wellington, NZ composer DaveEdwards with some able assistance from duo or trio theWinter...Guitars, violin, cello, and percussion all stack up… He’s got a persona that’s all his own.”
– George Parsons, Dream Magazine #5
All acoustic, with a string section, recorded and mixed on analogue equipment, and originally released on cassette in 2003 – new 2020 remaster.
The album is structured as a progression from summer (with a NZ pohutukawa tree in flower on the cover) through autumn – a time of harvest, preparation, shortening daylight, and the shedding of old dead layers – and finishes with an extended live version of ‘O Henry Ending’, recorded at the Winter’s first gig.
The original C60 cassette (and later online) release included solo interludes recorded in 2002. The collaboration with these guys followed on from
By focusing on the 2003 sessions Loose Autumn Moans becomes concise, emphasising the lyrics and the jazzy acoustic instrumental interplay – a mini orchestra to bring colour.
“A strange sonic brew that includes dissonant rock textures, rough outsider folk-blues mysteries, electric and acoustic improvisations and a considerable part of tasty feedback. Imagine equal parts Derek Bailey, New Zealand’s Pumice and classic ’60s blues/folk and you’re in the right ballpark.” – The Broken Face