Sometimes, the most important books find you when you’re not looking. I came to Pauline Oliveros the old-fashioned way. After work, in Carin and Teamy’s office, I was winding down, not searching for anything. A small blue book on the desk caught my eye: Quantum Listening. Its simplicity - cover, title, and size - drew me in. I picked it up, read a few pages, and didn’t put it down for a while.

Note the strategically placed bookmark: it’s from a first pass at the new Seeds covers, and it marked my place as I read.

The book came from Well Read, a curated space in Lisbon. There, someone decides what matters and arranges books where you might stumble across them. Although I’d picked up ‘Quantum Listening’ elsewhere, the feeling of that kind of serendipitous discovery is unique to physical spaces like Well Read and why we still need them so much. Certain discoveries only happen that way. No method would have led me there. No recommendation engine has the patience for a small blue book sitting quietly on a desk at the end of the day. Now that I know more about her, I think Oliveros would have appreciated this: real listening, like real reading, needs a space slow enough to receive it.

That evening, once home, I shifted almost without noticing from the accidental find of the book to a different kind of search - this time via algorithms. Intrigued by what I’d read, I began following a thread I hadn’t pulled before. My curiosity led me to ‘Deep Listening’ - the cistern recordings, the drone pieces. Suddenly, I realised this whole world had been humming quietly, waiting below the surface for me to find it.

Photography: Centrum Foundation

The recording is called Deep Listening. It was made on October 8, 1988, at the bottom of a disused military water cistern in Fort Worden, Washington State. This concrete cylinder was built in 1907. It is 186 feet in diameter and 14 feet underground. It was designed to hold two million gallons of water and withstand bombing. Oliveros and two collaborators—trombonist Stuart Dempster and vocalist Panaiotis - climbed down a ladder through a small manhole. They began to play. No audience. No setlist. Just the three of them, their instruments, and a space with a reverberation time of 45 seconds. (Deep Listening Band, 2026)

Forty-five seconds. Every note played remained in the air for almost a minute before fading. The cistern was more than a venue; it was, in essence, the instrument.

What they were doing, Oliveros later said, was “learning to play the space itself.”

It's a sensibility that others were finding their way toward independently. In 2000, a Montreal artist duo called [The User] - Thomas McIntosh and Emmanuel Madan - turned Silo #5, an abandoned grain elevator in the city's Old Port, into something similar: a communal instrument, open to anyone. They wired it with microphones and speakers, gave it a phone number (+1 514 844 5555), and let the world play it. The structure had a reverberation time of over twenty seconds - the building doing to sound what the cistern did, but from a call box. Hundreds of thousands of people dialled in. (Thanks to Teamy for flagging this after reading this piece for me. Note to self OUT LOUD, research an extended piece on acoustic spaces as instruments)

“Can you imagine listening so intently that the room itself becomes a collaborator? Sometimes I wonder how often we let our surroundings shape what we hear, or if we mostly tune them out.”

The album is 63 minutes of accordion, trombone, didgeridoo, voice, conch shells, and garden hose. Long tones dissolve. Sounds blur where one ends, and another begins - like moving through a dream. Listening feels as if wading into warm, deep water in the dark. I sat with it for an hour and emerged as if I’d slept. That effect - the weird feeling of resurfacing from a dream - was, I soon learned, not a coincidence but an intended part of the experience. Learning this deepened my understanding of what I was hearing.

Who was she? Pauline Oliveros was a Tejana composer, accordionist, and philosopher. She grew up in Houston, bewitched by cicadas and neighbourhood frogs. She co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Centre in the 1960s…

She spent the rest of her life - she died in 2016 at 84 - building Deep Listening. In later years, she shared that life with IONE, a sound artist and poet. Together, they created music theatre and dream research projects. Oliveros’s work wasn’t just about thinking; it rested on the idea that listening or ‘hearing’ happens involuntarily. The ear picks up sounds automatically. Listening is choosing to notice what’s already present.

Deep Listening was her way of bringing out this in-between state, making listening last so long that it was almost like being held in a waking dream - a way to stay open to both what you notice and what is just below the surface.

What Oliveros encouraged - in the cistern, steady accordion pieces, and Sonic Meditations with a women’s group in the early 1970s - was likely a brain state dominated by alpha waves: “relaxed alertness” or “flow,” marked by calm, thoughtful activity. Alpha waves move 8 to 13 times per second—a mental twilight, softer awareness, an open mind, between wake and sleep. Below alpha is theta (4 to 8 times per second)—the realm of dreams, gut instincts, drifting before sleep, moments when morning images linger. Theta dominates during REM sleep. Research on remembering dreams finds '“frontal theta activity directly governs whether we can bring those nocturnal experiences back on waking.’” The dreaming brain uses the same tools for dreams and for deep creative thought.

Oliveros, without using brain scans, taught people to notice that state while awake. Long, steady sounds guide the mind - they keep a steady pace, leading it through alpha waves and toward something slower and deeper.

A note on the 70s, quickly, because it’s an era that has been misread. The New Age movement flourished around Oliveros’s early work. It notoriously extracted contemplative practices from their Indigenous and Eastern origins, flattening them into commodified wellness aesthetics: crystals, chakras, brainwave cassette tapes sold in health food stores. It’s a residue that still contaminates any conversation that brings up the words “vibration” and “consciousness” in the same breath.

Oliveros went the other way. She created Sonic Meditations with a feminist group after months of experimentation - both political and musical.

She worked with physicist Lester Ingber on how people pay attention when listening. She developed new methods: drone music, underground cisterns, and hearing research. She didn’t borrow spiritual ideas she hadn’t earned; she built her own from basic concepts and real experience. The term ‘meditation’ hides what she truly did - her work was more unusual and precise than that word suggests.

Later in her life, Oliveros went further. In her 1999 essay - republished as the slim manifesto ‘Quantum Listening’, with a foreword by Laurie Anderson - she pushed the idea into stranger territory. for decades - both central figures in American experimental music, both working at the crossroads of technology, performance, and consciousness, both sharing a conviction that listening was something Western culture had systematically undervalued.

They performed together, improvising live to a screening of a silent film at EMPAC in 2013. Oliveros was on accordion, Anderson on electric violin. They also appeared together in the 1993 documentary The Sensual Nature of Sound, a portrait of four women who had quietly remade the terrain of American music. (The Films of Laurie Anderson, 2013)

When a later documentary about Oliveros’s life was released, Anderson contributed a single-word review: Luminous.

Oliveros, in Quantum Listening, says that we have become a society that mostly pays attention to what we see. Hearing is treated as something extra. Her best example is NASA. In 1998, they sent a $165 million Mars probe with a $15 microphone from a hearing aid, almost as an afterthought. The sounds of another world: an extra. This is even more striking when you know that Anderson later became NASA’s first artist-in-residence. She was not a scientist or an engineer. She was an artist. The agency that didn’t think to listen to Mars brought in the woman who spent thirty years listening to everything else.

‘Quantum Listening’, she wrote, is “listening to more than one reality at once, in as many ways as possible. “Changing, and being changed by, the act of listening itself - hearing microscopic detail and the entire field simultaneously.

Her main point: hearing is sidelined in modern life. We are, she says, “a visually oriented society.” The ear tells the eye where to look, but the eye dominates. Research on machine vision advances faster than on hearing. We bring cameras to the zoo, not recorders. Zoos aren’t even open at the best times for sound - early mornings and evenings, when animals are loudest. The birds on my Lisbon terrace, as the weather improves, prove this point.

She says ignoring hearing isn’t harmless. Not listening leads to isolation. She asks, ‘What if you could hear colours? What if we launched a satellite microphone to listen to space?’ An electron microscope lets us see tiny structures. But we could also listen to the micro world and reveal a universe shaped by quantum physics.

Oliveros saw a comparison. What we notice through listening is not set or just waiting for us. It is partly defined by how we listen and pay attention. What we hear depends on how we listen. Which is a very unusual idea: “The quantum listener listens to listening.”

Listening to listening. Not just paying attention to the world, but turning back to notice how you are paying attention. You become aware that you are aware, watching your mind at work. It’s like a feedback loop for your mind. The brain gets quiet enough to notice what it is doing, letting you watch yourself think.

Then there’s the Tuning Meditation.

Written in 1971 and later expanded into The World Wide Tuning Meditation (2007), the instructions are almost absurdly simple. Take a deep breath and let it all the way out with a sound. Listen with your mind’s ear for a tone - internally, amid the silence. On your next breath, using any vowel sound, sing the note you silently perceived. Then listen to the whole field of sound the group is making. Find a voice distant from you and tune to it as exactly as you can. Then contribute a new tone - one that nobody else is singing.

Oliveros performed a version at St John’s Smith Square in London in June 2016, just after the Brexit result, and the feeling of community that flowed through the room as the audience sang together was described as genuinely palpable. When the piece was revived as a global Zoom event in the early weeks of lockdown in spring 2020, it reached over 4,600 participants from all seven continents and more than 30 countries. (Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros, n.d.) Thousands of people, alone in their homes, breathing and listening together, singing tones they’d imagined internally, tuning to strangers they couldn’t see, building a shifting chord-mass from nothing but breath and attention.

It is, in the most direct sense, a network spanning many people. A living system composed of individuals paying close attention to one another. Which brings us, finally and not by accident, to plants.

It turns out that plants are electrically active in ways that are surprisingly similar to the sound worlds Oliveros explored. They don’t have nervous systems like animals, but they constantly send and receive tiny electrical signals - small currents through their cells, changes in voltage that let them sense and respond to their environment. These signals occur at frequencies very close to the alpha and theta ranges, where the human mind is most open.

Some researchers have started turning these tiny electrical signals to sound through a process called biosonification (Brian d’Souza, we’re looking at you): wires on leaves pick up small electrical changes - caused by photosynthesis, water moving, and reactions to light and touch - and turn them into digital data that becomes music. The result is slow, calm, always changing, and never exactly the same. Oliveros, in Quantum Listening, imagined this exact idea: that we could listen to the tiny world through instruments, the way we already see it through powerful microscopes—and, by doing so, find a strange universe that cameras could never show us.

Plants also react to sound, and not by accident. Roots grow toward the vibration of running water, even when there is no water, finding their way by sound instead of by what they touch.

‘Plant roots were able to detect sounds and also to grow towards the source of the sound.’
Prof. Stefano Mancuso, researcher,

Flowers make sweeter nectar within minutes of hearing the low buzz of bee wings. Plants that feel the vibrations of caterpillars eating start chemical defences they do not use against wind or birdsong - which means they are not just reacting to any noise, but telling different sounds apart with great accuracy. The world below what humans usually notice is full of activity. Some of the most important communication in nature happens at sound levels most of us have learned to ignore.

Kate Brown’s Tiny Gardens Everywhere - a history of city gardening recently featured by Caught by the River, whose festival at Elmley we’re proud to be part of this May—makes a similar point in a different way: a plant is not simply an object, not just decoration, but something that naturally connects things. Gardens, wherever they are and whatever they look like, tend to create what she calls “communities that are biological as well as social”—a rich mix of connections that help people get by. The communities that form around growing things are, she finds again and again in different times and places, some of the strongest we have. Which is, when you think about it, exactly what a forest already knows.

Then think again about the Tuning Meditation - all those voices distributed across a network, each one listening carefully, each one contributing a tone that nobody else is singing. It starts to seem less like a metaphor and more like a description of what a garden is already doing, continuously, whether we’re attending to it or not.

Oliveros understood this, even without the research.

Her cistern recordings sent sound back into the ground - to stone, soil, and packed earth, the world of roots and fungi. She talked about listening with the whole body, through the feet as much as through the ears. “Sometimes I try this when I’m walking: How much of the world can I hear if I let my attention sink down, out of my head, into my body?”

Through practice, she was reaching for a way of paying attention that took less and gave more, involved less ranking things, and was more about being part of nature. Not the position of someone looking down at what they study, but letting that difference disappear completely.

Maybe that’s the point: to stop being a spectator and become part of the field itself.

It’s a way of being that the environmental health researcher Yoshifumi Miyazaki has spent decades trying to measure. His work on shinrin-yoku - forest bathing, the Japanese practice of walking slowly through the woods without rushing - has found that spending time among trees causes real changes in the body that Oliveros’s practice also aims for. Stress hormones go down. Blood pressure drops. Heart rate becomes steady. And brain activity moves toward the alpha range - that same relaxed, open state that long, steady sounds help create from the inside. Miyazaki’s main point is simple and a bit surprising: our bodies still know that nature is home. Not solely as a symbol. Physically. The nervous system knows where it is and reacts accordingly.

What Oliveros was doing in the cistern - going down into the earth, letting such echoes blend single notes into something flowing and alive - was, in its own way, like forest bathing for the ears. A return to the ground. A reset. The slow, careful attention that both practices need is not merely a treat or an escape. It’s a way of being that the body, it seems, has been waiting for all along.

Inside Quantum Listening, she puts the stakes plainly: the devaluation of hearing through unconsciousness has caused a serious imbalance in the quality of life. Suppression of listening, she writes, leads to separation and alienation. We need, she says, to be “listening in all possible modes to meet the challenges of the unknown - the unexpected.” Feels like, in 2026, just like a line written for now.

What she offers - as brain scientists study how dreams are stored by theta waves, as bio-sonification artists let birch trees and ferns make music, as plant scientists find that roots find their way by vibration—is less a method and more a way of being. It is a willingness to slow down enough to notice what is already being sent out.

The alpha state is not a retreat from the world. It’s the frequency at which the world becomes audible.

The question, as always, is whether we’re paying close enough attention to hear it. 🌿

On that note - here’s something I stumbled across late at night, headphones on, the city gone quiet outside my window. Oliveros and Eno played at the same time… somehow it works amazingly well.

Start here: Pauline Oliveros — Deep Listening (1989), recorded in the Fort Worden cistern, Washington.

Then: Sonic Meditations (1971).

Read: Quantum Listening (first published 1999, republished 2022 by Ignota Books / Silver Press) 80 pages, worth every one.

The World Wide Tuning Meditation is still performed periodically through the Centre for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — anyone can participate, no musical experience required. Also: Yoshifumi Miyazaki — Walking in the Woods (2018) and Shinrin-Yoku (2018). Kate Brown’s Tiny Gardens Everywhere (Bodley Head, 2026), reviewed at Caught by the River. For the plant side of the music: seek out Mileece’s biosonification work, or Brian d’Souza’s Plants Can Dance project — electrodes on leaves, music that grows.

There’s a basil plant on a windowsill somewhere in Seoul. It doesn’t know I’m writing about it. It probably doesn’t know much of anything, at least not in a way we’d recognise as knowing. But Jimin Sung and Yejin Jang, the duo behind Salamanda, sat with it long enough - imagining its days, tracing its small ceremonies of light and warmth - that it became something else entirely. Well… it became an album that they entrusted to us.

Seeds 008 is the eighth edition (did you guess that already?) and the second release of ‘Season Two’, as we’ve been calling it. After Brian d’Souza (aka ) took us underground with the root negotiations of Sunflowers, Salamanda bring us back above the soil. A single basil plant. A full day.

A Day in the Plant’s Life

The album opens with ‘introduce my atom, which is my favourite one’, a title that sounds like a child’s declaration, or something an entity might say if it suddenly became aware of its own cellular existence. Morning light. A quiet announcement of presence. From there, ‘to to ki toki tok’ settles into something rhythmic and dripping: water falling, a clock ticking, the slow metabolic pulse of photosynthesis going about its work without any fuss.

Next, ‘allez, pousse!’ emerges as the album’s pivotal moment, capturing the push toward light. Anyone who’s moved a plant pot and watched it reorient overnight will recognise the idea. As the day continues, ‘hungry snail’ arrives: a slow, creaturely interruption on the glass, filled with longing and tenderness.

As afternoon deepens into ‘Basil’s Ritual,’ the warmth and devotion of the day repeat from root to leaf. Night then falls, signalled by ‘Basil’s Dream,’ which brings something like sleep. The album closes with ‘the blue wine,’ a final reverie that’s hard to describe but fitting - a closing reckoning.

Have a listen to that as we’re premiering it on here:

The Question Underneath

After the music, Sala imagines her plant gazing all day, receiving darkness, welcoming morning, and tilting toward tomorrow’s sun with what she calls “quiet sincerity.” This outlook is generous for something simply kept in a pot on a ledge.

Manda diverges slightly; Basil is a herb that, grown well (something I’ll admit I’ve never been very good at), ultimately finds its place in a salad, a sauce, or pressed between your fingers after it’s crushed.

Does the basil know that? she asks. Would it resist, accept, or perhaps feel something close to joy? “This music emerged from such small, trivial, and possibly useless imaginings,” she notes. That self-deprecation is part of what makes the thought worth sitting with.

“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

St. Basil the Great’s quote lands differently once you’ve spent thirty minutes inside a plant’s imagined interior life. The name alone, it turns out, is a thread worth pulling.

Written & Produced by Jimin Sung and Yejin Jang Artwork by Daniel Hermann Release Date: April 16, 2026

As with every Seeds release, the cassette edition comes with a packet of basil seeds. The most on-the-nose thing we’ve ever done, and entirely correct.

Pre-order Seeds 008 via Bandcamp

🌱👀

Best known for his hypnotic visual installations and art direction across DIY music spaces from Old Red Bus Station to Resonance, House found himself at last year’s Watching Trees festival doing something beautifully meta: filming daytime trees to project back onto their evening counterparts through a cascade of prisms.

The “arty bullshit” behind it, as he puts it, was about bridging gaps of time and space and memory – creating past tense ghosts of daylight. But really, “it just looked pretty, and the trees and sun had it all covered.”

Whilst setting up his spectral light show on the Bush of Ghosts stage, Tia and Wil (that’s us) caught wind of the music he was playing. What unfolded in those early morning hours was something special – patient, ambient-soundscapes with a deep understanding of the fractal nature of the forest, where every process is made up of countless sub-processes doing their best impression of one solid bit.

This mix captures that philosophy; energised yet gently held, pulsing yet ambient. Mirroring both the slow, steady rhythm of plant growth and the constant, quick reactions within the cells. There are rarely right angles in the forest, just lots of individual leaves doing their thing- a benevolent collusion with the kodama, those forest sprites that House channelled through his psychogeographic, hauntological light work.

From the Rhubarb Triangle of West Yorkshire, where he dabbles in ambient matters with his long time friend Aaron during hazy Sunday afternoon straggler zones, overlooking different vistas, House has created something that feels like plugging into the mainframe with beings deep in the woods, under a very full moon.

Always bring a memory stick, indeed.

Who are you?

You, probably ∞♡…

Musically though I’m just a product of a load of great communities, bands, parties and people I’ve been with, in and around. In no particular order… Duke, Comfort Peter, Fever, Endless City, Old Red, Resonance, NARR, HCE, Wizold Sage, Dima Rabik, Amateur Hour, Workshop, Map, Slop, LTJ, Phaedra, a Village Mind, Giggle + a few more that never got round to the naming process. Also any I’ve forgotten because it was too much fun. Long live DIY music in all forms, nooks and crannies.

Why are you here?

I was doing some special lighting for the Bush of Ghosts at Watching Trees which involved filming the daytime trees each day then projecting them back onto their evening counterparts through a load of prisms. The arty bullshit behind it is that it was trying to bridge the gaps of time and space and memory, creating past tense ghosts of the daylight. Using the projector as the one light source, the prisms split the beam into thousands of tiny rainbows all containing it’s own unique hue and personality alongside the essence of the original whole. It was inspired by the whole psychogeographic cut up tape drift animism forest sprite faerie kodama hauntological kinda thing but it also just looks pretty and I didn’t realy have to do much cus the trees and the sun have it all covered.

As I spent so much time messing with the projectors on the stage I was playing some music during setup and Tia and Wil enjoyed it, so here I am 🙂 I have dabbled in ambient matters with my mate Aaron (A far better gardener and DJ than me) for a looooooong time now, so it has been real nice to share this with a wider audience outside the usual sunday afternoon hazy straggler zones overooking different vistas of west yorkshire. Always bring a memory stick!

When are you happiest?

I’m trying to be happiest right now but yesterday I found that quite hard and who knows about tomorrow. I do really love plugging into the mainframe and being with beings deep in the woods under a full moon though. Maybe even with some tunes on.

Are there specific genres or styles of music that you feel naturally complement the act of planting seeds?

Planting seeds is great but it takes a certain amount of energy and foresight to plant seeds right now that you might never even see fully grown in your lifetime. I like to feel energised and gently held by benevolent tunes with a pulse and not too many sudden movements. I feel like planting seeds is one of the biggest movements you can do to reclaim your physical, mental and emotional space from the machine, so lyrics and samples that encourage thought about this process always compliment it nicely.

How important is minimalism in music designed for slow, organic processes like plant growth?

I feel like minimalism has its place but the natural world can actually be pretty maximal most of the time. It’s just our new world has so much noise we now see that natural chaos as calming. Every process is made up of countless sub-processes, self replicating patterns and individual parts doing an impression of one solid bit. The fractal nature of this is something I like to play with and bring out in music – what is fast and what is slow? What is ambient? It’s totally subjective but I love music which somehow manages to pack itself with energy but still remain relaxed and ambient – that’s very seedish. There’s rarely a right angle in the forest, but you’ll find a hell of a lot of them in the topiary and landscaping of royal gardens. That’s a nice tree, but it would be a lot nicer if it was a cube. Once you zoom in there’s no right angles though, just a load of individual leaves doing their thing doing their best impression of one.

How do you approach creating music that mirrors the slow, steady rhythm of plant growth?

I love music that manages to mirror this on all levels, some elements showing the slow steady rhythm and some parts mirroring the constant quick reactions and interactions within the cells of the plant. I think we project speed onto the plant from our own perspective when comparing it to the speed at which our lives unfold, but I love to think about how time perception can vary from species to species.

What role does silence or pauses play in evoking the growth process in your music?

I love to walk as many places as I can and whenever I walk I enforce a strict no-music rule, apart from in emergencies of course. This silence brings an opportunity to do some deeper listening to things like the wind in the trees and the birds doing their thing and the dual carriageway in the distance. These are all very helpful things and can be fed back into the cycle of creation nicely.

What instruments or sounds to you evoke the feeling of nature and growth most effectively?

Acoustic instruments which require a human to function feel the most natural and fitting for the garden to me. It’s great what we’ve done with synths and electronics in the last 70 years or so, but that’s so new compared to the entire history of nature and humans. I reckon some of the older plants might be a bit confused about kick drums and what they are doing on the turf. We’re all going to have to find a symbiotic relationship though – everybody loves a kick drum sometimes. I like to imagine how many of them I’ve heard in my life and how different it all is now to when you heard the first one.

What did you grow in your garden this year?

I’m from the Rhubarb Triangle which is almost as exciting as the Bermuda or Wold Newton Triangle. Wakefield is the rhubarb capital of the world, so it would be rude not to grow a bit even if it’s just for bragging rights and crumbles. The trick to good rhubarb is forcing it to grow earlier than it would naturally, keeping it in total darkness, making it constantly reach for a light it is unlikely to find. It’s not too kind to the rhubarb but that’s the truth, it’s not nice but it makes the taste way better for us bigger and more advanced beings doing the harvesting.

What do you find most challenging about caring for new plants?

I’m actually naturally terrible at caring for plants. I’m trying my best and I really love them but I really do struggle with almost every aspect of it. Plants are the chaos which requires the order of the seasons and surrounding environment to flourish. My current life contains a chaos to order ratio that can be no good for the plants if I’m honest. Maybe when life changes I can be trusted to look after some in my own space. For now I visit them at their own homes and it works well for both of us, I think or hope there’s mutual respect. A cornus is not just for christmas.

Have you ever used music or other sensory experiences while tending to your plants?A few of us are working at the moment to create a sensory garden, arranged in separate areas for feel, smell, taste, sight and sound and with the grey areas between the categories seeping into each other’s spaces. There were a lot of different plants, lights and sounds of all descriptions – not one of them will have the power to overwhelm the senses or create a negative experience for any of the other plants or for the people loitering in the flowerbeds. All of them will be a treat for at least one of the senses. Nature is such a holistically sensory experience, I love the idea that gardens are kind of like playlists of curated moments.

Check out Jamie’s portfolio: https://www.hamiejouse.co.uk/art

Soundcloud: https://www.soundcloud.com/hamie_23

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamie_jouse

Ironic Hill – Chorus

Kuzich – Morning Sun
John Haycock ft Rob Dunford – Dapple Shade
Palta – Tabt optagelse
ssssoftpatch – Bowling for Loops
Agron – Should I feel bad for doing This
Wizold Sage – Comfort Heater

Christian Kleine – Beyond Repair (Version)
Golden Bug & In Fields – Blind
Ex-Terrestrial – Everybody Dreams
Takao – Bird Ensemble
David Versace – Heart to Heart
Barker – Fluid Mechanics
Shhhhh – Pond Natter
420 aka Galcher Lustwerk – Untitled 6
Motoko & Myers – Plover
Zammuto – It Can Feel So Good

Helianthus annuus - the common sunflower - is perhaps the most immediately joyful plant in any garden, for me anyway… and a friend of ours, Brian, aka Auntie - but we’ll get into that later.

For now, sow those seeds 2cm deep and 30cm apart between March and May, place them in bright direct sunlight, and within weeks, something remarkable begins to happen.

Stats fans: The British record for the tallest sunflower stands at just under 8m - an ambitious column reaching toward the sky… legends.

The real story of the sunflower isn’t what happens above the soil; it is most definitely beneath it.

But first, what we see is THAT FACE. That enormous, vivid disc - butter yellow, amber, rust - which most people mistake for a single flower. It isn’t. A sunflower head is an inflorescence: a community of up to 2,000 individual florets arranged in an extraordinary mathematical spiral. The outer ray florets, the ones we recognise as petals, are sterile; purely for display. The inner disc florets are the workers; each produces pollen and can set seed. The face of a sunflower is not a single thing, but many ‘things’ acting together, as one. A whole society, you could argue.

That spiral follows the Fibonacci sequence - the same pattern that’s found in pinecones, nautilus shells, pomegranate seeds and the pineal gland (a pinecone-shaped endocrine organ in the brain’s centre that regulates sleep cycles) and much more in nature. The more I’ve looked throughout my life, the more and more I’ve seen it. Nature returning to that reliable architecture: the one that packs the most into the least space, wastes nothing, shares the load evenly. Before you’ve even got to the roots, the sunflower is already making a case for collective efficiency over individual glory. If only life imitated this, hey!

There’s a useful parallel here that made when we spoke to him for Seeds Mix #9 - talking about the fractal nature of the forest, how “every process is made up of countless sub-processes, self-replicating patterns and individual parts doing an impression of one solid bit.” A sunflower head is exactly that: thousands of florets doing their best impression of one enormous flower.

Zoom in and this unity dissolves, zoom out, and it’s seamless.

“Fungal networks form physical connections between plants. It is the difference between having twenty acquaintances and having twenty acquaintances with whom one shares a circulatory system.” Sheldrake again, sorry I should have been more adventurous with my research, but his ideas are just too apt.

Sunflowers are not the solitary giants they appear. They are social creatures, woven into a quiet web of negotiation, cooperation, and communication that scientists are still only beginning to map. When two neighbouring sunflowers encounter a patch of nutrient-rich soil between them, they don’t rush to claim it. Instead, they deliberately root elsewhere - yielding, deferring, coexisting. For a species that can grow the height of a house, this is an amazing act of restraint. It suggests that coexistence can be a stronger evolutionary drive than the dominance we see all around us at the moment. That survival of the fittest may sometimes look a lot like getting along. Pretty pertinent in these later days.

This root behaviour is part of a broader phenomenon researchers call ‘plant neighbour recognition’. Sunflowers appear capable of distinguishing between their own roots and those of strangers, adjusting their growth accordingly. When planted alongside seeds from the same parent plant they compete even less aggressively, growing taller and producing more seeds than when surrounded by unrelated neighbours. Family, it turns out, changes how a plant behaves in the world. A sunflower standing next to a sibling is a different organism from one standing alone.

“Fungal networks form physical connections between plants. It is the difference between having twenty acquaintances and having twenty acquaintances with whom one shares a circulatory system.” Merlin Sheldrake, again.

Sunflowers are not the solitary giants they appear. They are social creatures, woven into a quiet web of negotiation, cooperation, and communication that scientists are still only beginning to map. When two neighbouring sunflowers encounter a patch of nutrient-rich soil between them, they don’t rush to claim it. Instead, they deliberately root elsewhere - deferring or coexisting if you like. For a species that can grow the height of a house, this is an amazing act of restraint. It suggests that coexistence can be a stronger evolutionary drive than the dominance we see all around us at the moment. That survival of the fittest may sometimes look a lot like getting along. Pretty pertinent in these later days.

This root behaviour is part of a broader phenomenon researchers call ‘plant neighbour recognition’. Sunflowers appear capable of distinguishing between their own roots and those of strangers, adjusting their growth accordingly. When planted alongside genetic kin - seeds from the same parent plant - they compete even less aggressively, growing taller and producing more seeds than when surrounded by unrelated neighbours. Family, it turns out, changes how a plant behaves in the world. A sunflower standing next to a sibling is a different organism from one standing alone.

Below the soil, this cooperation is facilitated in part by mycorrhizal fungi - the vast underground networks that connect plant roots across a garden, a field, a forest. Through these fungal threads, plants exchange water, phosphorus, and carbon. They don’t just tolerate the network; they invest in their environment, sometimes sending resources to weakened neighbours with no obvious return. I mean.... 🤯

The sunflower participates in this economy, if we should call it such a thing. What looks like an individual is always, underground, a node in something larger, in a distributed system - which, if you spend enough time in rooms with good sound systems, starts to feel like a familiar idea.

Then there is heliotropism - that defining, almost tender behaviour of young sunflowers tracking the arc of the sun across the sky. East in the morning, west by evening, reset overnight. The stem grows faster on its shaded side during the day, slower during the night - a rhythmic cellular elongation that is the plant equivalent of turning your face toward warmth.

Researchers have found this isn’t merely passive phototropism. The east-facing warmth of a sunflower in the morning actively attracts pollinating bees, who prefer warmth to cold. A sunflower that has tracked the sun all night to greet the morning east-facing is running warmer than its surroundings by as much as 10 degrees Celsius. It is, in effect, offering its visitors a heated landing pad, burning its own accumulated energy to make itself more hospitable. The plant isn’t just growing; it is cooperating with the ecosystem around it.

And the bees return the favour. Sunflowers are among the most visited plants by pollinators in a temperate garden. Their nectar is generous; their pollen abundant. The transaction is ancient and mutual - a contract written over millions of years of co-evolution. The sunflower that gives its warmth gets pollinated. The bee that accepts the warmth feeds the colony. Nothing wasted. Everything shared.

When the sunflower reaches maturity, the stem stiffens and the face settles eastward permanently - as if having danced long enough, it finally finds its stillness. Even this final orientation is an act of service: the fixed east-facing bloom continues to warm its florets in the morning sun, remaining attractive to pollinators long after the dancing is done.

A single sunflower head can produce between 1,000 and 2,000 seeds - far more than any one plant needs for its own reproduction. The excess feeds birds across the autumn and winter months; goldfinches, greenfinches, and house sparrows prise the achenes loose with practised precision. Mammals take what falls to the ground. The sunflower doesn’t hoard its surplus. It produces abundance and releases it.

Native to North America, sunflowers were cultivated by Indigenous peoples long before European contact - not only for food but for dye, medicine, and oil. The Hopi (by coincidence, my middle name!) used the seeds as a food source and the purple-black hulls to make a dye for baskets and body paint. The Cherokee employed the plant medicinally. Across dozens of nations, the sunflower was understood as a provider - something whose abundance, properly tended, could support an entire community - a real relationship between person and plant.

The Cherokee employed the plant medicinally. Across dozens of nations, the sunflower was understood as a provider - something whose abundance, properly tended, could support an entire community. A real relationship between person and plant.

Growing tip fact fans: if you prefer many smaller flowers per stem instead of a single large bloom, cut off the growing tip when the plant reaches 1m tall. This encourages side shoots and branching stems, each of which will form several smaller flowers. A plant that might have stood alone, singular and dominant, learns instead to proliferate - to spread and share its flowering more widely. The gardener’s intervention unlocks a latent generosity the plant was always capable of.

It’s tempting to read something into that.

Sunflowers get stressed: When stressed by insects or disease, sunflowers emit volatile compounds that neighbouring plants can detect and respond to - priming their own defences before the threat arrives. A kind of early warning system, distributed across a field. A form of collective care that travels through the air, invisible and constant.

The sunflower standing alone in your garden is speaking - to the bees landing on its warm face, to the fungi threading through the soil around its roots, to the seeds it is already preparing to scatter. It is embedded, always, in a conversation larger than itself.

The question is whether we’re paying close enough attention to hear it…

Musicians, it turns out, have always been drawn to the sunflower. Freddie Hubbard wrote Little Sunflower in 1967 - a modal jazz standard built around D minor, warm and unhurried, that’s been covered so widely it’s practically become part of the furniture. Notably, it’s an instrumental: the sunflower communicated without words, just as the plant itself does. More recently, Post Malone and Swae Lee sent Sunflower to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 on the back of a Spider-Man film, and Rex Orange County found resilience in the image on his 2017 track of the same name. Even Harry Styles had a go - which, depending on your Sunday morning, is either deeply comforting (mine) or entirely beside the point.

The sunflower has never been short of admirers. What it had been short of, until now, was someone willing actually to listen to one, which brings us onto…Scottish producer Brian d’Souza - known to many as Auntie Flo ()

He spent the past year listening to all of this more closely than most. His Plants Can Dance project captured biodata from his son Hector’s sunflower growing in their London garden, feeding that living electrical information into a modular synthesiser to build an album that traces the full arc of a sunflower’s life. Released on Music to Watch Seeds Grow By - that’s us - the result is seven tracks that feel less like compositions and more like transcriptions. Patient, faithful documentation of something that took the right conditions to exist.

“I chose sunflowers because they embody cooperation over competition,” Brian explains. “When they encounter nutrient-rich soil between two plants, they deliberately root elsewhere to avoid conflict - demonstrating that co-existence can be a stronger evolutionary drive than dominance.”

The album opens with Signs of Life - sparse bleeps emerging from near-silence, a seed in soil, a first electrical pulse. By Germination, the structure is forming above the surface. Irrigation brings fluid movement and the sense of underground negotiations beginning: roots sensing moisture, reaching, responding - feeling their way into that subterranean web of exchange. Heliotropism is the album’s most kinetic moment - the sunflower orienting toward light, like, as Brian describes it, a dancer moving toward a single strobe on a dancefloor of soil. Stand Tall carries the weight of a stalk finally strong enough to bear what’s coming. Sunshine, Freedom, and a Little Flower gathers every sound across the album into a single, complete portrait.

The final track, Hector’s Sunflower, is a coda and a dedication. Named for the boy whose garden plant started all of this - whose observation, curiosity, and care made the whole project possible - it ends the album as a reminder that behind the botanical research and modular synthesis, this began with a child watching something grow.

It began, in other words, with attention. Which is maybe the most radical act available to any of us in these complicated days

“You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can’t just wait around - you have to water it and take care of it.” Bootsy Collins

Brian d’Souza has done exactly that. And what grew is well worth the wait. 🌻🌻🌻

Brian d’Souza’s Plants Can Dance (Sunflowers) is out now on Music to Watch Seeds Grow By. Last few cassettes that coome with a packet of sunflower seeds included, and as a digital download at auntieflo.bandcamp.com.

“I have come to the conclusion that this album contains a spirit with which we can interact as if we also had one.”

That line perfectly captures what I’m trying to articulate. That quality to certain music that operates on a different frequency - beyond what we can easily quantify or explain.

I’ve been having this ongoing - at times slightly heated - conversation with BoG witch (Tia) about how I describe music that touches on the mystical, the spiritual, the unexplainable. She sent me this track before Christmas, and it reminds me of the sounds my parents would play when I was small - music outside of ‘conventional frameworks’. Existing in that beautiful liminal space where sound is something more than just mere ‘entertainment’.

A healing, transformative affair if you like…

And this one, too, invites an experience rather than just offering ‘passive listening’ (something we try never to engage in here at Seeds).

I grew up surrounded by alternative healing practices, mysticism, and ways of understanding the world that exist outside dominant Western scientific frameworks. These weren’t fringe beliefs in my household - they were foundational. And honestly, whilst at the time it made it slightly more challenging to grow up in a more traditional schooling framework, I now trust those instincts more than I trust what late-stage capitalism wants to sell us as “rational thought.”

So when we encounter music that channels ancestral wisdom, spiritual energy, or transformative power - music that heals rather than just entertains - we want to celebrate it for exactly what it is.

Thank god BoG witch shares these same leanings…

I don’t see this as music that needs defending or qualifying (anymore); it’s music that knows its purpose. It’s an interesting realisation to come to that maybe, just maybe, my parents might have been right all along…ssh don’t tell ‘em ;)

Morning Trip what a label. This track off that album is 🤩

“Keep finding amazing dead women” BoG Witch

“Could also be dead” <read not replying to any of our emails>

Magic from Mr Hillage in 1979… definitely not dead.

And Priscilla (hoping to hear back from our email soon winking smiley face!)

Recent post from the excellent from alerted our ears to the amazing Liom. Also check their new collab out now.

cloud collecting

cloud collecting #44: Líom

I first came across the Netherlands-based artist Líom in 2020, and her music has stayed with me weekly ever since. Líom’s music offers this rare kind of quiet, and she’s someone I always want more people in the world to hear. If you have followed my…

Read more

3 months ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · marine eyes

Thanks also to Liom for the Ambient Sleeping Pill heads up.

Discovery from Christian Naujoks on Dial from a couple of years back via Ally Tropicana…

Not forgetting Kayla Painter’s amazing new album on the excellent . Music for when the sun breaks through the window on a crisp winter morning, like it did just now…

Plenty more where these came from…
We’ll try to keep on top of this column this year.
More sound medicine - for all beings, plants and other - as ritual, as connection.

Want something else to be going on in the meantime, or want to hear this more
(hint: play this round and round and round):

…best check BoG Witch’s In Reverie show on ROVR here.

💚 🌱 👀

There’s something about walking, at least there is for me anyway. Not just the movement but the way it opens space for listening, opens up my mind. I wish my knees would hold up so I could run more, but walking is a very close second. With both, there’s nothing much else that can get in your way… For Glasgow-based artist Susannah Stark, the walk from the city to Carbeth becomes a meditation on paying attention, on taking your time with things, on letting roots guide the way.

In Stark’s work, sensitivity is a form of attentiveness, a willingness to be present with the human voice, with the spaces between sounds, with what emerges when you slow down enough to notice what’s around you. Remember when we all used to do that? Her approach to creating music mirrors the patient rhythm of plant growth – something we like around these parts – not forced or rushed, but allowed to unfold at its own pace.

“Pay attention to the roots!” Stark says. It’s a gardener’s wisdom that applies equally to music-making. Sometimes the most beautiful things emerge when we’re open to what’s already there, quietly, peacefully waiting beneath the surface.

For this mix, Stark draws on her love of vocal harmony and polyphony, choral music and modular synthesis - the human voice and the electronic landscape working together like walking and listening, movement and stillness, roots and growth.

Her amazing “Minor Gestures” album on the consistently excellent Nightschool Records explores these same territories: softness, rhythm, encounters between beings, and the different dimensions of speech and sound.

The walk to Carbeth is a ritual many Glaswegians know, a movement out from the city’s grey stone into something wilder, more open. This mixtape captures that journey as Stark experiences it: when you’re happiest taking your time with things, when you’re sensitive to what’s around you, when the flowering plant you didn’t expect becomes the most meaningful bloom in your garden.

Get your headphones on, get your hands dirty with the earth, and let this mix guide you out of the city and into growth…

Who are you?

Somebody sensitive

Why are you here?

To create and share and become aligned with community

When are you happiest?

When taking my time with things

How do you approach creating music that mirrors the slow, steady rhythm of plant growth?

Paying attention

What did you grow in your garden this year?

I tried to grow coriander, sunflowers, and chamomile last year, but the only thing that came up was a flowering plant from the previous gardener.

Got any growing tips?

Pay attention to the roots!

How do you feel when you see the first sprouts emerge when planting a seed?

Happy

Congrats, you’ve won the plant lottery! You can choose anything you want. What is it?

A giant tree being.

What instruments or sounds do you evoke the feeling of nature and growth most effectively?

The human voice and modular synths

If you were a plant, what would you be and why?

Wild rose, because it smells good and grows by the sea

What is your favourite part of the planting process?

Getting hands dirty

Are there specific genres or styles of music that you feel naturally complement the act of planting seeds?

Usually listen to vocal harmony & polyphony, choral music

Mion-phuingean ‘Minor Gestures’: Susannah Stark & Band is out now on Night School.
Catch Susannah live this year. Full details here: susannahstarkmusic.com/

Tracklisting

Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh – finally i divided myself into three
RÓIS – a woman goes swimming in a lake
Ailie Ormston – Engine Mod
Evie Waddell – Bogaidh
Drew McDowall – Each Surface of Night
Morvyn Menzies – Crodh Chailein
James Graham – O ’s toil’s gur ro-thoil leam
Sholto – Solo Organ
Eithne Ni Uallachain – Babóg na Bealtaine
Cindytalk – Dream Ritual
Ishbel MacAskill – Eilean Fraoich
Semay Wu – A Long Road
Curlew – Air
Susannah Stark & Band – Dithis Phrìosanach
Harry Gorski-Brown – Buain na choirce
An Choirm Cheoil san Áras Béal Áthan Ghaorthaidh
The Poozies – Dheanainn Sugradh

BOG witch (Tia) here, reporting from Tokyo!
Editor's note: this was back in Nov ‘25, but the end of the year ran away with me, and I forgot to post this!

I’ve been eating a bit too much ramen and shopping too much, so I had a shrine day to walk off my sins.

Meiji-Jingu: An Oasis in the Urban Chaos

I visited the Meiji-Jingu Shrine and gardens next to Yoyogi Park in Shibuya, and I think it might have been my favourite temple I’ve seen on the trip. It was such a beautiful pocket of tranquillity in the city - the kind of place where the noise of Shibuya’s crossing fades into nothing the moment you pass through those towering torii gates.

The approach to the shrine winds through a dense forest of over 100,000 trees, all donated from across Japan when the shrine was built in 1920. Walking that gravel path felt like stepping through a portal into another world, where the only sounds were my footsteps crunching and the distant calls of birds. The air felt different there- cooler, heavier with something sacred.

I saw loads of crows gathering in the trees (goth shit, obviously), their black silhouettes stark against the winter sky. There’s something about crows in a shrine setting that just hits different - they feel like they belong to that liminal space between worlds. And then I discovered a new bird called a Brown-Eared Bulbul!

These little guys were flitting about the gardens with their distinctive brown cheek patches and slightly punky crests. They make this chattering call that I kept mistaking for something mechanical at first. I watched one perched on a sake barrel for ages…

The main shrine building itself is beautifully austere - all that dark cypress wood and copper roofing, aged to a gorgeous green patina. There’s something deeply moving about seeing rituals being practised with such reverence in the heart of one of the world’s most futuristic cities.

Gotokuji Temple: The Kingdom of Lucky Cats

After Meiji-Jingu, I headed to Gotokuji Temple in Setagaya, the birthplace of the Maneki-Neko (lucky cat). The journey there felt like a proper Tokyo adventure—taking the train to a quieter neighbourhood, walking through residential streets where the city reveals its softer, more domestic side.

The legend of this place is brilliant: during the Edo period, a feudal lord named Ii Naotaka sought shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm when he noticed a cat beckoning him from the temple entrance. Intrigued, he followed the cat inside - and moments later, lightning struck the tree where he’d been standing. In gratitude for the cat saving his life, the lord became a patron of the temple, and a statue was made in honour of the feline. The temple’s fortunes turned, and the Maneki-Neko was born. 😺

Walking into Gotokuji is genuinely surreal. The temple grounds are covered—and I mean absolutely covered—in hundreds upon hundreds of small white ceramic beckoning cats. They’re everywhere: clustered on shelves, lined up on steps, crowding the offering halls. Each one represents a visitor’s wish or prayer, left behind in hopes of good fortune. Some are tiny, no bigger than your thumb. Others are substantial, cat-sized cats. All of them have that same serene expression, one paw raised in that eternal welcoming gesture.

It should feel overwhelming, maybe even a bit creepy, but somehow it doesn’t. There’s something gentle about it—all these hopes and dreams taking the form of cats. I left one myself, a small one I’d bought at the temple shop, adding my little wish to the multitude. What did I wish for? That’s between the cats and me.

The temple itself is beautiful too, with traditional architecture and a three-story pagoda that you can glimpse through the trees. But honestly, the cats steal the show completely. I must have taken about a hundred photos trying to capture just how strange and wonderful the whole scene is.

Here’s some music that soundtracked the wander...

Tokyo’s Sacred Spaces

What struck me most about both places was how Tokyo manages to hold these pockets of contemplation and tradition within its relentless modernity. You can be in the thick of shopping districts and traffic one moment, then walking through centuries-old forests or sitting among hundreds of ceramic cats the next.

These shrine days have become essential to my Tokyo experience—not just for walking off the ramen and shopping excess (though that helps), but for finding those moments of stillness that make the chaos more bearable. Plus, where else can you spot crows, bulbuls, and an army of lucky cats all in one day?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve earned another bowl of ramen. 🍜

Keep it witchy... 🐦‍⬛

We’re opening our second growing season with something rather special: a new work from Scottish producer Brian d’Souza (also known as the excellent Auntie Flo) and his Plants Can Dance project. It’s a composition drawn from botanical research into how sunflowers interact, cooperate, and compete beneath the soil, where we can’t see them.

After a first season that saw sold-out releases from Woo, Davis Galvin, Graintable, E Ruscha V, Stella Z, and Lapalace, Season Two continues the intertwining of music with the process of growth and cultivation… but this time, we’re going underground.

The Underground World

Recent studies have revealed something remarkable about sunflowers. Below the surface, their root systems engage in complex social behaviours. They exhibit spatial awareness and a form of etiquette: avoiding competition when resources are plentiful, sharing nutrient patches when necessary, and positioning themselves strategically when they have better access to resources.

This delicate balance between cooperation and competition underpins Brian’s composition. It’s about the negotiations we can’t see, the quiet diplomacy happening in the dark.

“I chose sunflowers because they embody cooperation over competition - when they encounter nutrient-rich soil between two plants, they deliberately root elsewhere to avoid conflict, demonstrating that co-existence can be a stronger evolutionary drive than dominance, challenging our traditional understanding of survival of the fittest.” Brian

Brian captured biodata from his son’s sunflower growing in their London garden and converted it into sound using his modular synthesiser. The data became a means of artistically representing the different stages of a sunflower’s growth, from first emergence to the underground conversations between neighbouring plants.

Through minimalist production and field recordings, the composition captures both the patience of root foraging and those underground negotiations for resources. It’s ambient music that reflects the quieter aspects of plant communication, the things that happen when we’re not watching.

The perfect Season Two launch then!

Written & Produced by Brian d’Souza
Artwork by Daniel Hermann
Release Date: February 19, 2026

As always with our releases, this is about creating space. Space to plant, to wait, to witness the slow and rewarding process of growth. Whether you’re sowing seeds or simply sitting quietly, this is music for those moments.

Each release as always comes with its own set of seeds to grow along to the composition…

“You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can’t just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it.” Bootsy Collins

Head to our Bandcamp to pre-order/listen to the previews.

Welcome to Season Two 🌻

Angela Lin, aka Angie QQ, producer and A&R behind the Sounds of Taiwan compilation, returned to Taiwan in May 2019 seeking refuge after the loss of her mother.

Angela Lin，又名 Angie QQ，《台灣之聲》合輯的製作人與 A&R。2019 年 5 月失去母親後，她選擇回到台灣，尋找心靈慰藉。

What she discovered in Taroko National Park became the seed for this mix: a meditation on grief, memory, and the way certain places hold us when we need holding most.

她在太魯閣國家公園的體悟，成爲這張混音作品的起點：一段對悲傷與記憶的沉思，也是一種在最需要依靠時，被某片土地溫柔擁抱的感覺

Taroko’s hidden temples and fervent lushness offered Lin sanctuary. She describes the experience as feeling “totally alive” – each leaf, each butterfly, each beam of light made sharp from grief. High in those mountains, she felt her mother could finally see her. Later, her father revealed that Taroko was one of her mother’s favourite places in the world. Though earthquakes have since closed many of the park’s paths, this aural journey captures what it’s like to walk and meditate there: spiritual, powerful, introspective, and healing.

太魯閣隱密的廟宇與蓊鬱的山林，給了 Angie QQ 一處心靈的庇護。她形容自己在那裡感到「完全活著」——每一片葉子、每一隻蝴蝶、每一道光，都因悲傷而變得格外清晰。在高聳的群山之間，她彷彿覺得母親正在看著她，那份被看見的感覺，不只是來自母親，更像是一種對自己悲傷的覺察與釋放——她終於能正視自己的情感，並感受到母親的慈愛與支持。後來，父親告訴她，太魯閣其實是母親生前最喜愛的地方之一。儘管地震封閉公園裡許多步道，這張聲音作品呈在那裡漫步、冥想的感受：靈性、深刻、內省，並帶著療癒的力量。

Understanding how music can hold both landscape and loss, the mix moves like a meditation, like the scene in Totoro where they dance to make their garden sprout, capturing the moment when grief sharpens everything into aliveness, when even the sound of light becomes audible.

音樂可以同時承載風景與失落，這張混音作品如同一場冥想般的流動——就像《龍貓》裡，他們隨著舞蹈讓花園萌芽的場景，捕捉到悲傷將一切都銳化、化為生命力的瞬間，連光的聲音也彷彿能被聽見。

Angie QQ is a Taiwanese American cultural producer based in Los Angeles. With her label Pure Person Press, she “creates and collects records that preserve the spirit of Taiwan.” Her latest collaboration with composer Lim Giong, Sounds of Taiwan, is an ambient record that invites artists to sample Lim Giong’s personal field recordings of Taiwan – a sonic landscape of the island’s people, nature, and spirituality. Through her other company, East Never Loses,, she has transformed mahjong into a cultural movement. Whether through music or mahjong, her work seeks to connect people to Taiwanese culture.

Angie QQ 是一位定居洛杉磯的台美文化創作者。她透過自己的公司 Pure Person Press，創作並蒐集保存台灣精神的唱片。最近，用和作曲家林強合作的作品《台灣之聲》，是一張環境音專輯，邀請藝術家取樣林強在台灣田野間錄下的聲音，呈現島上人文、自然與靈性的景象。透過另一家公司 East Never Loses，她把麻將變成一場文化運動。不管是透過音樂還是麻將，Angie QQ 的創作都希望把人們帶回台灣文化的懷抱。

Lin describes herself as “a little living thing” here for the same reason a flower blooms in a garden. She’s happiest when completely present with the people she loves, and gravitates toward plants that teach her about letting go – like the Money Tree she once tossed outside while dying, which grew back strongest when left alone.

林形容自己是「一個小小的生命」，她在這裡的原因就像花朵在花園中綻放一樣。她最開心的時刻是當她跟愛的人在一起時。她總被那些教她學會放手的植物吸引—比如她曾經在它快死時扔到戶外的發財樹，反而在外面送長得益發茁壯。

“This mixtape was inspired by my time in Taroko National Park in May 2019. My mother had just passed 6 months ago, and to mourn, I returned to nature. Taroko has hidden temples and places of meditation tucked in all of its crevices. I was able to disappear and hide in its fervent lushness. Inside Taroko’s incredible energy, I felt totally alive. Up high in those mountains, I knew my mother could finally see me. I found out later from my father that Taroko was one of my mother’s favourite places in the world. Sadly, Taroko in recent years has been decimated by earthquakes. Many paths and roads are no longer accessible. Nature reclaims nature. I hope however, this mix offers a feeling of what it would be like to meditate and walk in Taroko: spiritual, powerful, introspective, and healing.”

這張混音作品的靈感來自我在 2019 年 5 月太魯閣國家公園的時光。那時母親剛過世六個月，為了悼念，我回到大自然的懷抱裡。太魯閣的山谷裡藏著隱密的廟宇和冥想之地，我得以在這片蓊鬱的綠意中消失、隱匿自己。在太魯閣那股令人震撼的能量裡，我感覺自己完全活著。在高聳的群山間，她彷彿覺得母親正在看著她—她終於能正視自己的情感，並感受到母親的慈愛與支持。後來父親告訴我，太魯閣其實是母親生前最愛的地方之一。可惜近年地震破壞了許多步道和道路，自然，最終還是屬於自然。我希望這張混音作品能帶給大家在那裡漫步、冥想的感受：靈性、深刻、內省，並帶著療癒的力量。

Sounds of Taiwan was manufactured in Taiwan and is primarily sold there, as a conscious effort to create a record by Taiwan, for Taiwan.

In the USA and internationally, it’s available exclusively at In Sheep’s Clothing which ships worldwide.

Listen and read the interview below:

《台灣之聲》在台灣製作，是一張為台灣而做的專輯，所以主要在台灣販售。美國及國際市場，僅透過 In Sheep’s Clothing 發行，並提供全球配送。

訪談

Ransom Note · Seeds Mix #6: Angie QQ – A Meditation Through Taroko (Taiwan)

Who are you?
你是誰?

A little living thing
一個小小的生命

Why are you here?
你為什麼在這裡?
The same reason why a flower blooms in a garden
就像花朵在花園中綻放一樣

When are you happiest?
你什麼時候最快樂?
When I am completely present in the moment with the people I love.
跟愛的人在一起時

How do you feel when you see the first sprouts emerge when planting a seed?
看到種子發芽時，你有什麼感覺?
Like the scene from Totoro when they dance to make their garden sprout
就像《龍貓》中他們跳舞讓花園發芽的場景

Congrats, you’ve won the plant lottery! You can choose anything you want, what is it?
恭喜你贏得植物樂透! 你可以選擇任何你想要的，那會是什麼?
I would choose Calla Lilies. They remind me of my mother.
我會選擇馬蹄蓮。它們讓我想起我的母親。

What instruments or sounds to you evoke the feeling of nature and growth most effectively?
什麼樂器或聲音最能有效地喚起自然和成長的感覺?
The sound of laughter, the sound of birds, the sound of water, the sound of breath, the sound of light.
笑聲、鳥鳴聲、水聲、呼吸聲、光的聲音。

What types of plants do you enjoy growing the most, and why?
你最喜歡種植什麼類型的植物，為什麼?
I like low-maintenance, easy-to-grow, long-limbed plants like the Pothos.
我喜歡好照顧、容易栽種、長枝條的植物，像黃金葛。

What do you find most challenging about caring for new plants?
照顧新植物時，你覺得最具挑戰性的是什麼?
Understanding how much water they need. I tend to overwater and overcare. I currently have a Money Tree that I once tossed outside because it was dying and I couldn’t stand to see it losing its leaves. It grew back strongly once I left it alone. I brought it back inside after 3 weeks. It’s quite happy and healthy now.
最具挑戰性的是要「澆多少水」。我以前總是澆太多、照顧過度。最近我有一棵發財樹，曾經因為它快枯死、我無法忍受看到它掉葉子，就把它丟到戶外。結果它竟然長得很茂盛。三週後我又把它搬回屋內，現在它非常健康、快樂。

Are there specific genres or styles of music that you feel naturally complement the act of planting seeds?
有沒有哪種音樂風格，天生適合種植？
Music created from breath: flute, bells, voice
由呼吸創造的音樂:笛子、鈴鐺、人聲

If you were a plant, what would you be and why?
如果你是一株植物，你會是什麼，為什麼?
I would be a peony – they have a flair for dramatics.
我會是牡丹，因為它們總帶著點戲劇氣息。

Sounds of Taiwan is out now and had just had a repress. In the USA and internationally, find it here.

TRACKLIST

稷廬 (jì lú) — 六妙 (Six Wonders)
Satomimagae — Numa
綠松 (Green Pine) — 菩提雨 (Bodhi Rain)
林強 許志達 (Lim Giong & Hsu Chih-ta) — 穿過黑夜的漫長旅途 (Long Journey Into Night)
點. (Point.) — 觀 (Contemplate)
天馬 (Sky Horse) — 生命波 (Life Wave)
代々木公園 (Yoyogi Koen) — +++++, +++++, +++++.
蘇聰 (Cong Su) — 隨筆…廣西采風回憶 (Odyssey…Memories Of Goang-Shi)
A.J. Alex & Yan One — PART.1
Silent Jeff — 黃泉 (Yellow Springs)
Mong Tong — Rain Maker
虛極 (Bliss-Illusion) — 宙甲 (Recovery of All Things)
雷光夏 (Lei Guangxia) — 小鎮之海 (Ocean of the Small Town)
No Translation — 白沙屯媽祖到西螺大橋 (Baishatun Mazu to Xiluo Bridge)
Go Kurasawa — green thing
Wu Zhuoling — We’ll Follow the Wind

Technicolour Gandalf here (you should see some of the clothes I’ve picked up on my trip round Asia!), reporting (I was, I’m not back in the ‘refreshing’ climes of Europe but anyway, here we go hey) from a Thai island in the Trat region, which shall remain nameless! (Not to be all “if you know you know” about it but this island is really special. You can do your own digging to find out exactly which one this is anyway…)

I’ve been coming down from three weeks of partying with the kids. At my age, I need some time to decompress with my cohort and extended fam before heading back to reality. This mainly involves eating A LOT of simple but amazing Thai food, swimming in the sea, and trying hard to drag myself out running around the island in the crazy humidity.

Managed a 10k which I was pretty proud of myself for. Running in Thai humidity is absolutely no joke – it’s like running through warm soup while someone points a hairdryer at your face.

But there’s something about early morning island runs, when the light is still soft and the heat hasn’t fully kicked in yet, that makes it worth the suffering. Plus, you get to see the island waking up: fishing boats heading out, locals tending their gardens, and birds going absolutely mental in the trees.

Plus I’ve had my personal trainer in tow in a golf buggy drinking beer, shouting “cockadoodle Wil” at me whilst I run in my prized knock off Chanel top…

Plant Paradise

The beauty of Thailand – amongst many other great things – is that they LOVE their plants. And being on an island, you get to experience them in their natural habitat instead of in parks in an urban environment. This is plants doing their actual job, thriving in the wild, not being carefully curated for city dwellers.

I spent quite a lot of my time on the island photographing some of the amazing flora there.

Once you start looking, it’s absolutely everywhere – climbing up trees, bursting out of the ground, draping over walls, and generally just living their best tropical lives.

The Caladium Situation

The Caladium game in Thailand is STRONG. It’s where they originally come from and only recently has it been a bit easier to get them in Europe.

These are WILD plants. Heart-shaped leaves in combinations of pink, white, green, and red that look like someone’s been at them with watercolours. In temperate climates, you see them as expensive houseplants in fancy shops. Here, they’re just... growing. Everywhere. By the roadside, in gardens, under trees, absolutely thriving in the humidity.

The variety is insane. Some have almost pure white leaves with just a hint of green veining. Others are deep burgundy with pink splashes. There are ones with such intricate patterns you could stare at a single leaf for ages trying to work out how nature managed to pull off the combination. Check the one above, it looks a bit like an early video game graphics.

Seeing them in their natural environment, absolutely unbothered, really puts into perspective how much we baby them indoors. These plants want heat, humidity, and to be left alone to do their thing. Note taken.

Rubber Tree Revelations

Seeing rubber tree plantations in action and the way they harvest them was super interesting. The trees are tapped like maple trees for syrup, except instead of sweet sap you get latex. They make diagonal cuts in the bark and attach little collection cups that slowly fill with this white, milky substance. The trees are arranged in neat rows, all at exactly the same angle (check one of the photos below for them all leaning quite heavily, presumably from the wind), all with their little cups attached. It’s oddly beautiful in an industrial-nature kind of way.

The locals have been doing this for generations, and there’s a real art to it. Cut too deep and you damage the tree. Cut too shallow and you don’t get enough latex. The cuts have to be refreshed regularly as the tree heals itself, and each tree can be tapped for decades if treated properly.

Watching someone do this with the easy confidence of muscle memory was fascinating. They move through the plantation methodically, checking cups, making new cuts, and generally maintaining this relationship between human industry and plant biology that’s been going on for over a century.

The Cat Temple Situation

We also came across a cat temple out on a headland which is pretty odd... but amazing!

I’m not entirely sure of the full story behind it, but basically there’s this temple perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea, and it’s absolutely overrun with cats. Not in a neglected way – they’re clearly being fed and cared for – but in a “cats have taken over this sacred space and everyone’s just cool with it” kind of way.

The cats are everywhere. Sleeping on Buddha statues, lounging in the prayer halls, prowling around the gardens, and generally treating the place like their personal kingdom. Some are friendly and will come investigate if you sit down. Others are completely uninterested in human attention and are clearly just here for the free food and prime napping spots.

The temple itself is pretty, let’s say DIY and ‘out there’. There’s a google review which I must question though as being very unfair.
The location is incredible too, with views out over the ocean and coastal cliffs. You can see why the cats chose to set up here. They’ve got taste.

There’s something wonderfully Thai about the whole situation. The sacred and the everyday just coexisting without any sense that one diminishes the other. They’re just sharing space.

Nature Reclaiming Paradise

One day we took a boat out to an island where nature is taking back control of a hotel development which the locals managed to stop from going ahead.

This was properly wild. There’s these massive concrete structures, all very nearly finished – the skeletal remains of what would have been a resort – slowly being consumed by the jungle. Vines are crawling up the walls. Trees are growing through cracks in the foundations. Roots are breaking apart the concrete…

It’s a strange kind of beautiful. On one hand, it’s technically ruins and decay. On the other hand, it’s nature demonstrating exactly how quickly it can reclaim space when humans step back. The jungle doesn’t care about your development plans. Give it a few years and it will absolutely dismantle whatever you’ve built.

The locals managed to stop the development, which is increasingly rare in areas seeing tourism pressure. There’s a real tension in these islands between development and preservation, between economic opportunity and maintaining what makes these places special in the first place. The main island though is owned by six families and they’re very strong in ensuring the island doesn’t get overrun or ruined by ‘capital’. It definitely feels like some utopia where they’ve just decided “this is enough, we’re all making enough and it’s fine the way it is thanks.”

Walking through the ruins felt like visiting a future where nature won. Everything was being slowly, patiently, inevitably pulled back into the forest. In a hundred years, you probably won’t even be able to tell there was ever a building here.

Trees That Live in the Sea

We also saw some great trees that grow in the sea. Mangroves!

These things are absolutely mad when you actually stop to think about them. They grow in salt water – which kills most plants – on these elaborate stilt roots that look like something out of a fantasy novel.

The roots arch up and down, creating these weird wooden cage structures that the trees sit on top of, lifting them above the water level.

They create entire ecosystems. The root systems become nurseries for fish and shellfish. Birds nest in the branches.

Crabs and mudskippers live in the mudflats between the roots. The whole thing is this incredibly complex web of life that only exists because these trees figured out how to thrive in conditions that would kill almost anything else.

Plus they protect coastlines from erosion and storms, filtering water and generally being environmental heroes. They’re not the flashiest trees – they’re kind of gnarly and twisted – but they’re doing serious work. Respect to the mangroves.

I was impressed by these ones…

Chilli Vibes

And some fiery chillies drying in the sun. 🌶️

There’s something hypnotic about seeing chilies laid out to dry – these brilliant red strings and clusters, sometimes spread on mats, sometimes hanging from lines, all slowly intensifying in the sun. The colours are absolutely insane – that particular shade of red that only ripe chilies and certain sunsets can achieve.

Thai chilies are no joke. Those tiny ones that look innocent? They will absolutely ruin your (my) day if you’re not prepared. The locals use them in everything, and watching people casually munch through dishes that would have me crying is always humbling.

Cookery School

Talking of chillis and cooking we did an amazing cookery course with this legend that is Leng and cooked some amazing food… We learned about Chillis there', there’s ‘tourist’ hot, then Thai mild, Thai normal and Thai REALLY HOT. Thankfully we toned it down for the class.

Made a new friend too:

Look at the view from the cookery school

The Tree Shirt

I also found an amazing tree shirt from the local market, perfect for BoG and Watching Trees next year.

Island markets are the best. This one had the usual tourist stuff, but also all the things locals actually need and in among all that, this absolute gem of a shirt covered in trees.

Can’t wait to wear it while staring at actual trees. Can you call this meta??

Cat Game

As I’ve already alluded to with the temple section the cat game was strong in real life too.

Island Flora Greatest Hits

Here are some more shots of the absolute diversity I came across...

The thing about island plants is they’ve often evolved in isolation, so you get these really specific adaptations and variations you don’t see on the mainland. Plus, the island microclimate – all that ocean humidity and salt air – creates particular growing conditions that certain plants absolutely thrive in.

I could have spent weeks just documenting the plant life. Every walk revealed something new – a flower I’d never seen before, a palm variety I didn’t know existed, or just a particularly stunning example of something common. The density of life in the tropics is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Listened to At Les a lot on the island for some reason:

and tried to unearth some other Thai-related abstract bits and pieces . These are kind of interesting…

Heading back to reality now, the island time was exactly what was needed. Three weeks of chaos followed by a week of plants, swimming, cat temples, and extremely good pad thai has restored the balance somewhat.

Thailand gets it. The plants, the food, the way they integrate nature into daily life, the unbothered cats living their best lives in temples, the locals fighting to protect their islands from overdevelopment – it all adds up to somewhere that understands what actually matters.

The fact that you can run 10k in humidity that would melt most people, then reward yourself with mango sticky rice and a swim in the ocean, while surrounded by plants that look like they’ve been photoshopped but are actually just thriving naturally - that’s a pretty good deal.

Massive respect to the island and its people for maintaining this particular kind of paradise. Also shout out to whoever makes those caladiums grow so perfectly, the person who tapped rubber trees with such precision, and obviously to all the temple cats living their best lives.

Shout out to the amazing Air plant hangers we saw by the side of the road… if I could sneak them back in bag I would have.

Also not forgetting the new supergroup…

Keep it planty... 🌴🌱🌿🪴🌼💐🌷

Strictly Kev likes the company of plants when he’s working on music… so that’s handy for us isn’t it?! We’re assuming he’s talking about a beautiful Calathea sitting in the corner for inspiration…

…though his dream plant setup – a conservatory packed with Romanesco broccoli, trippy Caladiums, and Persian Shields – is something we’d be well on board with too.

Enough of the plant talk for a second, and back to the music, ambient music to be clear. For those that weren’t squatting in South London back in the early 90s, Openmind were the four-piece behind the mighty Telepathic Fish – the legendary ambient afterparty that transformed chill-out rooms from dub-playing afterthoughts into proper destinations.

Kev, along with Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix, RIP), David Vallade, and Mario Aguera, started in a shared house above a shop, with no neighbours to complain to or to bash the door down. What began as art school parties quickly grew into Sunday afternoon sessions in squatted venues – a former dole office in Brixton and even the derelict Roundhouse on New Year’s Day. They hosted everyone from Aphex Twin to Mixmaster Morris among wall-to-wall mattresses, UV installations, and Coldcut’s Matt Black with his boundary-pushing video projections.

The idea was simple: recreate that post-clubbing comedown vibe but on a massive scale, as an “aural and visual blanket” for club-rattled minds. They even published a fanzine called Mindfood and worked at the scene’s hub, Ambient Soho record shop, helping shape what Simon Reynolds called a “wombeldelic sound-and-light bath” in contrast to the current trend of hardcore and its relentless assault. Read Muggs excellent piece in the Guardian revisiting Telepathic Fish, the heart of the 90s chillout boom

Thirty years on, that spirit’s having a comeback. Events like London’s A Loose Ting are bringing back the bedding and the hushed reverence, while Berlin’s Overflow is going full sensory overload with vibrating mattresses, fountains, and harpists. New York’s Planetarium gatherings have people mostly horizontal, inspired by psychedelic therapy sessions. There’s even an ambient sauna in South London you might have come across via the wonder of Music To Watch Seeds Grow By’s recent takeover.

Our very own Watching Trees dabbled in said chill-out space this year, pairing the abstract and the ambient in the Bush of Ghosts space, with projected dappled sunlight visuals from the mighty Hamie Jouse.

Turns out people still need those little havens away from the madness, especially in this day and age!

Also handily 30 years on, the Openmind crew have just compiled the first-ever Telepathic Fish retrospective for Fundamental Frequencies – a double vinyl love letter to those hazy early-90s mornings when the music finally slowed down.

For this Seeds Mix, Kev has leaned into his love of minimalism and systems music – repetition built from layers of loops offset against each other to form subtle polyrhythms. There’s a deliberate avoidance of drum machines here in favour of organic percussion, and around the eight-minute mark, a section from Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia that captures the feeling of being deep in the forest, phone abandoned, discovering that paradise was just a forage away.

Living on the third floor without a garden might limit his horticultural ambitions for now, but there are plans afoot for a dedicated psychedelic garden somewhere down the line. Until then, there’s this mix - 90 minutes of patient, slowly unfolding ambient music that asks very little of you except that you sit still long enough to let something grow.

The Telepathic Fish compilation is out now on Fundamental Frequencies. There’s also a dedicated Telepathic Fish Instagram now.

Listen to Seeds Mix #5: Openmind’s “Leave your phone at home and discover paradise after a forage in the forest”

Interview

Who are you?

I’m Strictly Kev aka DJ Food aka Openmind. I’ve DJ’d for four decades now, been a part of the Ninja Tune label for over three as an artist / designer and I write stuff occasionally too. The latter pseudonym used to be my DJ name pre-Ninja and I’ve also used it for my design work for the past 30 years.

Why are you here?

When a man and a woman love each other very much… Seriously, it’s a long series of hard work and fortuitous meetings that’s brought me to be writing these words at this very moment. The specific reason for this mix and questionnaire is the Telepathic Fish compilation I co-compiled with my fellow Openmind compadres, Mario Aguera and David Vallade. A selection of ambient tracks we used to play at the chill out parties we hosted under this name alongside fellow flatmate Chantal Passamonte (RIP) back in the early 90s when we all shared a house together.

Do you consider the emotional connection humans have with nature when creating music?

Honestly, no. I’m usually too busy wrestling with whatever technology I’m trying to create music with. Nature can come into the picture later when the music is being ‘consumed’.

When are you happiest?

When I’m creating something or experiencing the creativity of others. Also laughing at absurd comedy or combing carboot sales or collections of ephemera.

How do you approach creating music that mirrors the slow, steady rhythm of plant growth?

I’m a lover of minimalism and what some call ‘systems music’, slowly evolving repetition that builds over sustained periods by small shifts or rearrangements in timing. My favourite means of creating this is by building layers of loops then offsetting them against each other so that they form subtle polyrhythms.

What did you grow in your garden this year?

Sadly, I don’t have a garden. I live on the third floor, and any window boxes I’ve attempted over the years are sorely lacking. I have a couple of cacti and that’s about it, but I have plans to move to somewhere with a dedicated space to curate a psychedelic garden.

What role does silence or pauses play in evoking the growth process in your music?

Silence and space in composition require nerve, and I tend to overload things and fill in the space. I’ve recognised this and now try to take things away or slow the pace rather than add more. I recently left about five seconds of black screen in the middle of a video mix; it was intentional, and it works in context, but the normal reaction to something like that would be that it was a mistake.

Have you ever used music or other sensory experiences while tending to your plants?

No, but I’ve used plants while tending to my music.

Congrats, you’ve won the plant lottery! You can choose anything you want, what is it?

A conservatory full of Caladiums, Canna, Persian Shields, Rex Begonia, Amaranthus Tricolor, Purple Oxalis, Begonia Maculata, Fittonia, Calathea, Romanesco broccoli and a mix of Dahlias.

What instruments or sounds evoke the feeling of nature and growth most effectively?

Percussion, the sound of wood on a natural surface, organic rather than synthetic, definitely no drum machines. There is a section in the mix that perfectly evokes nature to me with this method on a track by the Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, it starts around the eight-minute mark.

If you were a plant, what would you be and why?

Maybe a Liberty Cap that could be found, consumed and create a memorable experience in the mind, a bit like a mixtape.

Tracklist

Sylvian & Czukay – Plight (The Spiralling of Winter Ghosts) excerpt 1
Marshall McLuhan – What’s That Buzz?
Exquisite Corpse – One
Vernon Elliot – The Clangers Intro & Dialogue
Steve Halpern – Cosmological Eye
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows (acappella)
Ecstasy Orchestra – Paradise
Ongaku – Mihon #2 (intro)
Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia – Obsidian (Deconstructure intro sounds)
Louise Huebner – Seduction Through Witchcraft (excerpt 1)
Paul Horn – Shah Jahan
MLO – Wimborne (Original Mix)
Louise Huebner – Seduction Through Witchcraft (excerpt 2)
The Orb – Star 6 & 789 (intro)
Group Modular – Lonely Pylon
Hypnotone – God C.P.U. (acappella)
Mergener / Weisser – Sunbeam
Global Communication – Ob-Selon Mi-Nos / 14:31
Todd Rundgren – Born To Synthesise
Jamie Lidell – Multiply The Voices
Vangelis – Blade Runner Blues
Ken Nordine – What Time Is It?
Scritti Politti – Absolute (acappella)
Slowly – On The Loose (Autechre Remix)
Sandoz – White Darkness
Tangerine Dream – Phaedra
The 7th Plain – Boundaries
The Shamen – Re:Evolution (a cappella)
Vapourspace – Gravitational Arch of 10 (intro/outro)
Paul Horn – Prologue/Inside
Sylvian & Czukay – Plight (The Spiralling of Winter Ghosts) excerpt 2
Yoshinori Sunahara – Journey To The Stars (excerpt)
David Sylvian – Answered Prayers
Grace Jones – The Crossing (ooh the action)
This Mortal Coil – Ive & Neet
Bill Nelson – Calling Heaven, Calling Heaven, Over (acappella)
The KLF – Waiting (excerpt)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Warriors (Return intro)
This Mortal Coil – Heart of Glass
Bill Nelson – Gnosis
Meat Beat Manifesto – Pot Sounds (intro)
The Future – Last Man On Earth
Meat Beat Manifesto – The Sphere

Telepathic Fish on Instagram

Strictly Kev on Instagram

Buy Telepathic Fish comp here

Music To Watch Seeds Grow By on Bandcamp | Instagram | Substack

Till next time. 🌱💚

When the rain let up we took a much needed day trip to Ninh Binh to dry out our feet out a bit. This is a region characterised by towering limestone mountains, lush green rice paddies, and rivers that wind through the valleys. A refreshing change from city life over the past few weeks!

We went on a boat trip along Tràng An, where we weaved through caves and got to see some really beautiful temples. It’s actually where King Kong was filmed! The contrast between the urban intensity of Hanoi and the timeless serenity of Ninh Binh was exactly what we needed. There’s something about rowing through those limestone karsts that makes you feel incredibly small and incredibly connected at the same time – like the mountains have been holding these secrets for millennia and you’re just passing through for a brief moment.

Then we climbed Ngoa Long Mountain for a panoramic view of the area…

And where Tia went some way to dealing with her fear of heights!

Vietnam has this incredible relationship with nature that you see everywhere – from the bonsai trees carefully tended on tiny balconies in the Old Quarter, to the way locals have planted tropical ferns and palms in every available crack and corner of the city. Even amidst the chaos of motorbikes and street food vendors, there’s always a plant fighting for its space.

Here’s the music that soundtracked our boat trip and wanders…

Thanks to Retreat Festival and Savage Hanoi for hosting us this weekend. Good times despite the rain! 💚🌱

Shout out to the water puppets in Hanoi too for keeping us all amused in the rainy days…

Next stop Tokyo for the BoG Witch and a small Thai island for Gandalf. Independent seed reports incoming!

A humid haze on temple spires, where golden Buddhas watch the hours.
The air is thick with frangipani and orchids dripping from their bowers.
The banyan roots, like tangled threads, crawl down the stone, a patient art.
A thousand secrets that they keep, woven deep within Thailand’s heart.

We’ve been in Thailand this last week, so once again, we did our best to find one of the city's best botanical gardens.

Queen Sirikit Park, located north of the city, was a revelation. It has an amazing variety of tropical and subtropical plants.

It was also handy that it was right next to Chatuchak Weekend market, so we could get a fix of clothes for Wil and ‘cute shit’ for Tia.

Here are some pics from our adventure…

and some more…

Here’s some music that soundtracked our wander…

Thailand LOVES plants, and in Bangkok, you find plants on all the city streets in the most random places. There’s a real beauty to the care that the locals take of plants in a busy, congested city.

Here’s some other random plants spotted on the street…

Great tree at a very odd ‘made-up’ old temple (kind of trying to emulate some Angkor temple) on the outskirts of the city…

and some from a visit to Jim Thompson’s house and gardens….

Nice cactus vibes in our apartment…

Endless love to Jay, More Rice and the crew at Bar Temp and Bangkok Community Radio for hosting us in another amazing city…

Shout out the motorbike taxis, without who we’d have not made it round the city nearly as quickly…

Next stop, Hanoi!

Keep it planty…

We’ve been in Seoul, South Korea, for the last week, so we took a little trip to Namsan Park to visit the botanical gardens, which lie at the foot of the Seoul Tower. We couldn’t find them or took a wrong turn, so we continued up the small mountain to see the tower up close.

Here are some pics from our adventure!

Extra note from Wil:
I’m not one to sit around after a night out and mope, so after our party at the ACE Nyapi club, I took myself off to Bukhansan National Park and up the mountain. It’s a few hours uphill, but by the time I’d got to the top, any remnants of the night before were gone… to be replaced with this view:

Here’s another one…

And here are some pictures of the beautiful acer tree leaves on the turn from the climb up and down, and an interesting mushroom…

…and some really amazing fungi on a log I came across..

I didn’t listen to much on the way up, choosing to engage with the sounds around me, but if I had the inside of my head, it would have sounded like this….

and the outside like this…

More details on the above come soon come ;)

The climb was so good that I dragged my cohort and a few other friends up again the day before we left… I won’t bore you with too many more photos but can confirm it was equally as good.… ok, maybe one more…

…and one more of our friend, Dave who joined us for some of the journey:

Endless love @nyapi_seoul, @ffanyourself, and the crew for hosting us in this great city.

Seoul has real soul 💚🇰🇷🌱💚🌱🇰🇷💚

Next stop, Bangkok! 🇹🇭🛺

Seeds co-parent Wil recently moved to Lisbon. After thirty years in London, it “felt about time” to try something new. It also gave Seeds a whole new green city to explore… which is handy.

Recently, Seeds family member Stella Z visited to play here at Lux and in Porto at Fiasco, with Lisbon resident Lizatron.

If you’ve not checked out her ode to the Fig on Seeds yet… you can still buy the digi on our Bandcamp below and grow along with it:

Want to know how the Fig we’ve been growing from seed with help from Stella’s album has been doing? Oh you do?

Then look no further…

(We might even have some seeds left of this so get in touch if you missed out on the cassette)

Right, back to garden the visit.

First we went to the Jardim Botanico…the botanic gardens here are pretty special with an amazing array of fantastical flora.

…we also got a photo of Stella with her ficus fam… look at how that it’s supporting itself. We worked out that when the branch gets to a particular weight it grows tendrils from its branches to the ground to support itself! Plants are great…

Next we moved onto Estufa Fria which is equally, if not more impressive than the botanic gardens…

Finally we went over to Cascais where Stella was playing on Radio Lusophonica…where we handily managed to get some new press shots for here too!

Top tip: both gardens are free on a Sunday.

Follow us on Bandcamp here and Instagram here

Much love to and the whole Plants Can Dance crew for last weekend. Music to Watch Seeds Grow By teamed up with Auntie Flo for the September edition of his ‘Plants Can Dance’ series at Hackney Wick’s Hideout.

Big up Lapalace for their beautiful out of body experience live set…

And the great Stella Z with her amazing poet Kirsty Koo…

Special shout-out to the amazing Tanya Wilson, who documented the evening with her beautiful illustrations.

A gallery below of what she drew on the day/night.

Till next time

🌱💚

Organic exploration with our first Music To Watch Seeds Grow By signings…

Some musical journeys begin with a whisper, a gentle rustling of leaves, and a breath of sound. For brothers Clive and Mark, aka the legendary Woo, this journey has been unfolding since the 1970s through a four-decad long sonic odyssey of discovery…

Their latest output on our very own Music To Watch Seeds Grow By imprint is an ode to Sweet Peas.

One of a series of five unreleased albums from their archives, it’s a thoughtfully curated collection of ambient, minimalist, and new-age soundscapes designed to be the perfect soundtrack for moments of sowing these seeds, which accompany every release in quiet reflection.

“To our surprise and delight, Sweet Peas can be planted in the autumn and they’ll blossom in the coming spring” notes Clive.

To accompany this creation, they’ve created “A Walk in the Woods with Woo” mixtape, where Stevie Wonder’s forest-infused melodies dance with Marlene Dietrich’s vocals and Schubert’s transcendent strings paint aural woodland landscapes. Each track is a seed, carefully planted, slowly unfurling its own unique narrative. It’s a meditation on growth, on patience, on the delicate art of nurturing something beautiful from the smallest of beginnings.

FULL INTERVIEW WITH WOO HERE:
www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/se…oods-with-woo/

Plants Can Dance, is our friend Brian d’Souza aka Auntie Flo’s exploration into plant and fungi bioelectrical music…. and it returns this Sunday to Hideout in Hackney Wick.

And Music To Watch Seeds Grow By will be joining his biosphere with our plant friends Stella Z and Lapalace both playing live on the day.

Brian says ”I wanted to create a multi-functioning event that covered all bases - from performances and deep listening to educational talks and workshops, and I’m super excited by the line up we’ve put together this weekend.”

You can find the full programme below.

If you are in London it would be great to some plant friends! Tickets here

Biosonification Workshops (3-5pm)

“We begin with 2 hours of workshops - where you can experiment with a variety of different devices that convert the electrical impulses from plants (and living things) into MIDI. It’s the same process that went viral recently with the fungi drummer”

“We’ll set up workstations with PlantWave, MidiSpad, Biotron, Instruo Scion and the brand new Pocket Scion from Instruo and our friend Tarun aka Modern Biology. They’ve kindly provided us with multiple Pocket Scions so everyone can have a go with making your own bioelectrical music.”

Talks (5-6pm)

Two guest speakers -

Wild City Studio:

Wild City is a local duo of Jon Davies & Steve Williams who create wild urban spaces celebrating ecology and community present ‘Forgotten Corners’, an optimistic vision to unlock in our abandoned and neglected spaces across the cityscape. Using their local community garden in Markfield Park as a precedent the pair explore the alchemy of turning waste into abundance

Glitch by Nowadays on Earth x National Trust:

Kalpana Arias will be presenting cybergardening app ‘Glitch’ - a pioneering platform that uses AI, machine learning algorithms, augmented reality (AR), and LIDAR to create a world-building game where you can plant a range of edible, floral and fictional AR plants whilst looking at your urban landscape through your phone.

Live Music (6-8pm)

“We’re collaborating with the brilliantly named record label ‘Music To Watch Seeds Grow By’ to showcase two artists from the label, Stella Z and Lapalace, both of whom will be playing live sets. They have both released music inspired by different seeds, which come in a neat package of a tape cassette and seeds that you can plant.”

We’ll be joined by Plants Can Dance residents, Auntie Flo and Lamine, who will again be experimenting with a dual modular synth set up, powered by the plants that Lamine will move over from his neighbouring plant shop Repot.

Here’s a video from last time around:

Plant Dance (8-10pm)

“We’ll finish off with a ‘plant dance’ which is basically a DJ set with music curated for the plants in the space (as well as the humans). The vibe will be similar to my My Analog Journal set from earlier this year”

If you are in London, we hope you can make it on Sunday. TICKETS here!

Muggs’s involvement with ambient music includes occasional work with Global Commmunication’s Tom Middleton, perhaps most notably on the 1000 capacity Sound of the Cosmos tent at the 2011 Big Chill, but also on collabs like an epic joint set at Spiritland in 2018 – check this for a flavour.

Muggs has championed ambient music in all its many forms over the years, check his 2014 ambient roundup for FACT magazine, his Solid Steel mix from 2015, and his Worldwide FM show which ran through the ‘Covid years’ and featured guest slots from e.g. JD Twitch, Grandmixxer, Meemo Comma and Surgeon

We recently crossed paths with Joe during a conversation for an upcoming Guardian article he’s tending to on the evolution of chillout, in celebration of the Telepathic Fish compilation set to sprout on September 5th.

What makes Muggs’ current trajectory particularly intriguing is his return to DJing ambient music at festivals like Houghton, We Out Here and the like. Ambient music is making a bit of a comeback, you might have noticed. As the music on the main stages seemingly gets faster, it feels natural that there’s a need to slow down somewhere, anywhere.

Experimental, ambient, and leftfield sounds to the fore, get horizontal. Something’s feeling quite full circle here.

So it is with some excitement that Joe agreed to don his ambient trousers again and step up for part 4 of the Seeds mix. “Music to Smell the Jasmine Whilst Watching for Bats in the Twilight” encapsulates what is often a poetic approach to ambient curation – clearly less about the dancefloor and more about creating an experience that enhances the environment around you.

Beyond the fabled chill-out room and into the field we go…

Listen and read the interview below:

Who are you?

I’m Joe Muggs, I’m best known for writing about music, but I spend increasingly more time either making and playing it, or branching out into researching social, subcultural, neurological etc aspects of creativity more broadly.

Why are you here?

An infinite cascade of rolls of the quantum dice over billions of years resulted in… well, hello.

When are you happiest?

Really the absolute basics: laughing with my wife and/or kids, long conversations in the pub, finding unexpectedly great music at a festival, DJing to appreciative people, seeing a weasel, all that.

What does the natural world mean to you?

It’s a weird relationship, I grew up in the countryside so took it for granted a bit, I was hugely privileged to run free in fields etc but also associated it with drizzly walks, falling in mud, nettle stings etc as much as anything else… Much later on a walking holiday in the Howgill Fells in horizontal rain in October I started to discover that discomfort is being alive, and now I chide my inner child off for complaining about brambles. I live rurally again now, but do still also live in my head a lot, and I can forget to look up or leave my shed very often… but that means when I do go out I can be surprised and bowled over by what’s all around me. The other day I saw a weasel hop across the road, I’d been feeling like shit but it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

We consider it necessary to play music to our plants to help them be the best they can. Your mix is based on ‘Music to Smell the Jasmine Whilst Watching for Bats in the Twilight’… Tell us about the selection and how you feel this helps Jasmine and how the bats feel about it.

It’s just the kind of music I play in the evening, either alone or when DJing – in fact quite a few of these tracks got an airing in the We Out Here ambient tent last weekend, and I recorded it in the afterglow from that amazing session. A lot of is quite sad or menacing because soft music is at its best when it’s emotionally full-spectrum, and it really suits the vibe of sitting out in the evening drenched in the jasmine scent, enjoying the fact that England is now A Hot Country, while also terrified about that fact. It’s got lots of ups and downs, and a bit of a sense of the promise of mischief at the end with the epic double dose of Superpitcher, and I like to think bats can dance to it all. They look like they’re dancing when you get more than one doing loop-de-loops round the garden.

What role does ambient or abstract music play in your life, and why do you think it’s something we all keep returning to it along our journey?

I spent a lot of time with headphones on as a weird child, and I loved the transportive power of radio plays, especially sci-fi, and doubly especially Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which is profoundly ambient. The first album I bought, aged 11, was Radiophonic Workshop Sci-Fi Sound Effects, which has a sound called “A Huge Ever-growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld”.As I first got into pop I was fascinated by stuff like Tango in the Night, Graceland, Dire Straits etc which were very expensive exercises in worldbuilding. Even as a teen metaller, I developed a habit of listening to the Friday Rock Show incredibly quietly as I went to sleep, and especially found stuff like Slayer became incredible as textural music. When rave culture came around, at first it was a lot more about sitting around on the Downs or in friends bedrooms listening to tapes – which naturally included a lot of Orb, KLF, etc (in fact I discovered that the tape I’d made with Chill Out on one side and the first Orb Peel Session plus a bunch of other ambient curios on the other had been duplicated to third or fourth generation copies around our town) – than dancing. So the chillout room, when I found them, was like a vision of heaven. I could list thousands of other contexts that took its place over the years, from Alva Noto soundtracked art installations at Sónar, folktronica by a campfire at Baskerville Hall, getting a sense of perfect stillness inside a giant bass tone at DMZ even as the dancefloor around me was going nuts, and on… I’ve just always sought out that cocoon or balloon of sound that takes you into a different world or transforms the space you’re in into something new and numinous.

You programmed the Big Chill ambient tent with Tom Middleton many moons ago. How did your love affair with ambient come to fruition?

Just the one year – 2011, the final Big Chill, and otherwise a slightly sad festival as it was all a bit corporate and unattended, but we somehow got a budget and amazing soundsystem for a whole weekend (all very late in the day, so Tom called up me and our mutual friend Richie to see if we could help). It was ravey during the day – a shit hot lineup actually, though I say so myself – I got Zed Bias, Cooly G, Ben UFO, Pangea, Swindle, Geiom… Dammit why don’t people give me budgets more often? Then after midnight curfew we lowered the volume and lights, pulled these giant sort of cushion-podiums, like giant pouffes, into the middle of the dancefloor, and played super chill until 4am. Proper classic chillout room, people having deep chats, couples smooching, but still some dancing (or swaying) going on too. Bliss. It was the all time harshing-of-my-mellow to drive out of that back to London to find that the “bit of bother in Tottenham” we’d heard occasional mutteirngs about at the festival had spread into something a lot bigger.

Define ambient and what it means to you?

As above, it’s about world building. Environmental music as the Japanese pioneers put it. Anything can be ambient. There’s lots of SONG-songs in this mix – but you can listen to the words or just let them wash over you, Ambient is as ambient does, I guess?

On the same note, what does silence teach you that sound cannot?

You really need to catch me in a chillout room at 4am to get the full spiel on this one. As well as growing up weird and quite isolated in the countryside, I was raised Quaker, and they do silent worship – essentially like a group meditation. One of the most profound artistic experiences of my life was seeing John Hurt do Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and a particular well timed use of the word “silence” at a couple of points in that. I’m not sure there’s any musical moment so powerful as a classic 94-95 jungle tune that has the tiniest moment of silence after the intro breaks, then there’s a siren, a dog barking, someone yelling and all hell breaks loose. Being diagnosed with ADHD at 50 I finally grasp why I crave true silence so much… sometimes. But there’s so many sorts of silence…

If you were a plant, what would you be and why?

Hmm, a massive gnarly old rosemary bush. Strong, dark, bitter, enduring, a bit tasty 🙂

What did you grow in your garden this year? How is the fig tree getting on?

I don’t know what most of the things in the garden are. The old couple who lived here before us, seven years ago, planted so well and durably, I just have to trim and prune, the one big and endless job is keeping brambles at bay. Fortunately I always love overgrown and tangled things, and there’s some great sprawling lavender bushes, wild strawberries growing like weeds everywhere, and climbing roses, grapevines, honeysuckle and passion flower that have got completely matted together across the pergola over a pebbly bit out the back where I’ve got a swinging basket egg chair from Aldi that I like to work in sometimes. I stick things into the muddle from time to time, like the fig tree which was a present and some mad giant alliums which my wife hates. The lawn, if you can call it that, is mostly clover and moss, but that’s fine as we have pet rabbits who are out in a run during the day and they love it and keep it trimmed. I did put in railway sleeper raised beds on the lawn (lockdown project of course!), one’s got some really thriving rasberries in, the other has a threadbare thyme bush and daughter and I have managed to coax some splindly but sweet carrots out of it this year too.

Got any growing tips?

Move into someone’s house who is amazing at selecting hardy perennials.

When’s the last time you brought a plant/seeds, and what was it?

I think it was probably the carrot seeds actually. My wife has been on a houseplant bender lately, and they’re looking good.

You’ve won the plant lottery! You can choose anything you want. What is it, regardless of climate or growing zone?

I really really love pines and firs, my first thought was the mad idea that I’d actually like a Giant Redwood but that would be my entire garden just for the trunk – slightly more realistic would be a big wide, weathered, mature Lebanon Cedar.

What types of plants do you enjoy growing the most, and why?

As before it’s that tangle of vines – the jasmine, honeysuckle, roses and passiflora all getting in amongst it and overwhelming whatever trellises or roofs they’re put near.

What do you find most challenging about caring for new plants?

Remembering to do it at all. ADHD, see? I definitely do need “fire and forget” type things if they’re to have a hope of survival.

What sounds from your childhood still bring you peace, and how do you weave them into your daily rhythm?

Wood pigeons. Takes me back to my grandparents’ garden in particular. Don’t really need to incorporate it as they’re around and cooing more oftent than not round here, it’s just a matter, like so much else of getting out of my own thoughts and paying attention.

What is your favourite season, and how does that influence the way you listen?

Even split summer and winter. Having speakers out on the lawn or somewhere public is such a privilege and pleasure, and especially since I bought The Midlife Crisis Soundsystem (a lovely RCF Evox 12 PA rig) I don’t take that for granted – getting to play records at our local brewery in a farmyard, or a tapas bar in the evening is just vibes upon vibes and a great social connector. But I also massively love the wrapped-up, safe feeling of winter listening, especially around Christmas, alone or with friends/family, but also when I used to have a SE London pub residency, the early part of the evening when the weather was cold and/or bad was a special joy, the feeling that when someone came in and got out of their wet coat or stamped snow off their boots, a record I was contributing to their sense of stepping into a little haven was always wonderful.

What does it mean to you to create space for stillness in a world that rarely stops moving?

It’s everything. I just wrote at length about this for the We Out Here in-festival magazine under the banner of my “soft music for hard times” idea. I got so many great quotes on the topic from musicians / DJs playing at WOH, but in particular this stood out from Abigail Ward, who as Ghost Assembly makes some of the greatest dancefloor music around currently: “As a neurodivergent person, I often crave solitude and emotional connection at the same time. Music holds both. It’s a mid-place. To withdraw into quiet music is not escape – It’s refusal. In the stillness it gives, I find rest, thought, and the kind of companionship that asks nothing of me. In today’s society I consider this an act of rebellion.”

And also, from the experimental MC Lex Amor: “The sweet and tender doesn’t scream or dominate our screens or feeds… we all need a balm – another route. Retaining tenderness in these times is choosing to exist above chaos – I think there’s revolution in that.” For me all of this also relates to our definitions of what “grassroots” are and how and why we should protect them, all of which brings in food and drink intergenerational relationships, spaces that provide genuine welcome instead of trying to squeeze money out of you… I constantly think about Paul Gilroy’s conception of “conviviality”, the way society does or doesn’t actively create meeting places for cultures, classes, age groups etc. If you check out my clip of We Out Here on my Instagram, I think you’ll probably agree even from just a few seconds, that the vibe was quite convivial.

Anything else we need to discuss?

I’ve actually got a bunch of articles coming up about ambience and related stuff, so keep an eye out, and do please support bassmidstopsandtherest.substack.com and theartsdesk.com where there’s always a ton of good stuff happening. Supporting independent culture journalism is as important as any other part of the infrastructure. There’s a big archive of my ambient shows of very different sorts on ROVR, Worldwide FM (with some mindblowing guest mixes), NTS (the “Love Drain” series of shows) and Solid Steel (still don’t know how I pulled that one off – someone told them made them feel closer to a dying friend because it helped them understand what it must be like to be in a coma… and meant that as a compliment). And I’ll be going double ambient at Hidden Notes festival next month, as part of KiF’s “Still Out Room”.

Tracklist –

Dr Rod Octopus vs Kirsty Hawkshaw – Ghost Town
Coby Sey – Eve (Anwummer)
Om Unit – Springdub Meditation
Wombo – Spyhopping
Ada – 25 or 6 to 4
Omara Portuondo – Tabu
Aswad – Ethiopian Rhapsody
Nwando Ebizie – Shadowland (In the Dreams of Others)
Muito Kaballa – Like a River
Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes – Theem Prototype
Ego Ella May – The Morning Side of Love
Minnie Riperton – Minnie’s Lament
Julee Cruise – She Would Die for Love
Ennio Morricone – Messico E Irlanda
Alice Zawadzki, Fred Thomas, Misha Mullov-Abbado – Tonada De Luna Llena
Resavoir – Sunset
Durutti Column – Grace
Scrimshire, Stac – Pep Talks
Brandee Younger – Dust (feat. Meshell Ndegeocello)
D’Angelo – Unshaken
Sabrina Bellaouel – Clémence
Bill Frisell – Sing Together Like a Family
Bobbie Gentry – Something in the Way He Moves
Frederic Galliano – Niamien Kinkeling (feat. Cissé Diamba Kanouté, Koko Ouadjah)
Underworld – Dune
Rufus Wainwright – Tiergarten (SuperMayer Lost in the Tiergarten Mix)
Talaboman – Dins el Lit (Superpitcher Remix)

Follow Joe Muggs on Instagram

Music To Watch Seeds Grow By on Bandcamp | Instagram

Greetings beautiful seedling, and welcome to our Music To Watch Seeds Grow By world… or to our friends - that’s you, dear supporter - Seeds.

We have lots of news, and we’d like to share the first piece with you if we may.

Woo Repress Time!

Due to OVERWHELMING requests, we’ve decided to repress Woo’s first Seeds outing and their ode to the Sweet Pea.

There are only a few left of these now - head to our Bandcamp to grab one.

The repress comes in a special green case.

As with all Seeds-related releases, you’ll also receive a packet of Sweet Pea seeds to sow + the digital album.

Check the Seeds mix they did for us, which launched our series over on Ransom Note below.
There’s also a nice interview about the release with them here

Seeds Mix #1: A walk in the woods with Woo

A bit about the mighty Woo’s ode to Sweet Peas:

It’s a thoughtfully curated collection of ambient, minimalist, and new-age soundscapes designed to be the perfect soundtrack for moments of sowing these seeds, which accompany every release in quiet reflection.

Composed by the renowned duo Woo—Mark and Clive Ives — this is one of a series of five unreleased albums from their archives. The release combines soothing tones from clarinet, guitars, percussion, and electronic elements, creating the perfect soundtrack for gardeners and music lovers alike. Featuring tracks like “Golden Hours” and “Earth Angels,” this album is an ode to the slow, rewarding process of growth and new beginnings.

“Like nature, our approach has always been quite random,” the brothers state, “ as with planting seeds the process has a purity that can bring unexpected results.”

The seeds you’ll receive with the release symbolise the potential for growth and connection to the natural world, aligning with the music's meditative and nurturing qualities.

For this release, the brothers have chosen Sweet Peas:
“To our surprise and delight, Sweet Peas can be planted in the autumn and they’ll blossom in the coming spring”

As Clive puts it: “Much like nature, music is an ever-evolving process. With this project our aim was to achieve an unpredictable organic flow that still feels harmonious.”

Let’s finish on something a bit planty from Woo:

Stream Woo’s Sweet Peas

Till next time, keep being nice to each other, keep planting… and don’t forget to follow us and/or share your seeds stories on Instagram here.

Tia and Wil <3

Music To Watch Seeds Grow By is a carefully crafted collection of ambient & minimalist soundscapes, occasionally branching into new-age.

A soundtrack for quiet moments of sowing, nurturing, and witnessing the slow, rewarding process of growth.