Vegetable Machine Animal - Guest

A live conversation between plants, fungi, machines, and human musicians

What would it sound like if we could interact musically with plants and fungi—if humans stopped to listen and respond? vegetable.machine.animal is an interspecies improvisational trio exploring this question through a hybrid sonic language of biosignals, modular synthesis, and live drums.

Led by drummer Kieran Monaghan, the project transforms living data from plants and fungi into voltage, translated into sound via modular synthesizer. Monaghan responds in real time, creating a feedback loop between human, organism, and machine.

Their debut album, GUEST, was recorded during the 2024 Sonic Artist Residency (Creative New Zealand / NZSM / Toi Pōneke) and emerged through open-ended, intuitive sessions. A diverse group of collaborators was invited to join the process, including Kedron Parker, Nico Buhne, Bill Wood, Ruby Solly, Indigique Brown, David Long, Andrew Faleatua, Andy Wright, Gemma Thompson, Timothy Morel, Mo H. Zareei, Tae Kyung Seo, Issac Smith, and Chrissie Butler.

Rather than guiding the music, contributors were invited to follow it—adding their voices to a living, shifting ecology of sound. The result is an album that is rhythmic, irregular, immersive, and alive.

GUEST is co-released by Audio Foundation Records (Tāmaki Makaurau) and skirted Records (Te Whanganui-a-Tara).

Tracklisting:

1. Ice Water. Warming World.
2. Contaminated by Humanness
3. Let the Shifting Ground Hold Me Up
4. The Strength of Rivers
5. Moat of Rest. Mote of Dust.
6. The Floor Holds
7. The Physics of the Swing
8. Random Patternings
9. Exit when Entering
10. Exuberant Whimsy
11. No Evidence of the Future
12. Forward. Tense.
13. In the End, it is Enough