Season Two continues with its fifth edition - a shift south this time, from KiF’s English hedgerows to the island of Lutruwita, Tasmania, and the work of Soda Lite.
The Cape Gooseberry (Physalis peruviana) grows inside its own lantern. Each fruit is wrapped in a papery husk, inflated and near-translucent, that hangs on the plant like something already lit from within before you’ve even opened it - a design shared with its relative, the Chinese lantern plant, and one that’s made it a favourite in gardens for looks alone. Native to the Andes, it travels under different names depending on where it lands: Inca berry, golden berry, ground cherry. It’s a plant that’s been prized and treated as a weed in equal measure, depending entirely on where it’s growing and who’s doing the growing - naturalised and often invasive across warm climates worldwide, including parts of Australia itself. That same adaptability was part of the draw for Alex too - a plant that’ll grow more or less anywhere means most of Soda Lite’s listeners, wherever they are, can actually grow the one this record is named after.
A gooseberry plant took root in the sand between the bricks of Alex’s back patio - nutrient-deficient leaves and all - and fruited regardless. That’s most of the appeal: “I’m drawn to species that survive in the interstices of human industrialisation.” The husk itself carries the same idea, shielding the berry until it’s ready to be let go.
Past Soda Lite records - Earthbound, Aqua Solar Cura, Vale & Stone - built outward from field recordings first. Here that flipped: you can’t field-record a plant, only the noise around it, so only two tracks (‘Vibrant Matter’ and ‘An Sí Gaoithe’) carry field sound at all. The rest came from narrowing to a single species instead of the wider non-human world, and “trying to create and replicate sound and energy on the level of the plant and its perceptive world.”
Two more things worth knowing. ‘Bryn Celli Ddu’ takes its name from a Neolithic burial chamber in Wales, aligned so the summer solstice sunlight reaches its back wall - the sun turning up again as its own recurring character. And ‘An Sí Gaoithe (Return)’ is a reworking of a Vale & Stone title, old fragments reprocessed into something new - “a bit like composting.”
Soda Lite is the recording project of Alex Last, a gardener and composer working from Lutruwita on unceded Palawa land. Their music moves through field recordings gathered directly from the island’s own biomes - coastline, forest, alkaline lake bed - alongside slow, warbling synth work, built less as backdrop than as document: proof of a specific place, at a specific time, being listened to closely. Past records have taken their titles and themes from geology and land relationships as often as botany - Aqua Solar Cura, Earthbound, Vale & Stone - so a plant with its own mineral-adjacent etymology (soda, found in dried alkaline lakebeds; lite, from the Greek for stone) suits the pairing.
As with every edition on this label, the cassette comes with a packet of seeds (for UK orders) and a fact card about the plant. 🌱
Tracklist & Notes
01. Emerald Armour - the soft green calyx that shields the ripening berry; emergence, sunlight, a first leaf.
02. Coralli - the old Italian name for the gooseberry; granular synthesis, roots establishing, sound swirling upward through shared channels.
03. Grasp of the Earth - named after The Ruin, an 8th/9th-century Old English elegy about building out of ruins.
04. Feorh Folde - Old English for spirit and earth; layered nutrients, layered root systems, repeating cycles.
05. Bryn Celli Ddu - the solstice alignment, up close; energy circulating, wind, water, heat.
06. The High Wide Gate Has Collapsed - also drawn from The Ruin; overcast, autumn.
07. Vibrant Matter - the berry at its sweetest and most acidic, high summer; title borrowed from Jane Bennett’s book on vital materialism.
08. An Sí Gaoithe (Return) - the Vale & Stone rework, old sounds composted into new.
09. Ripening Sun - dusk, autumn; the berry and the sun as dual metaphors.
10. Nova Epoko - Esperanto for “New Age,” and not that at all: toil before hope, ending as ambiguous as it starts.
Preview the album:
About Soda Lite
Soda Lite is the recording name of Alex Last, a composer based on the island of Lutruwita (Tasmania), working on unceded Palawa land. Alex is an artist, musician and teacher who spends as much time as possible outdoors - birdwatching, hiking, kayaking - an interest in the natural world that runs directly into the music itself, built from field recordings gathered from the island’s own biomes: coastline, forest, alkaline lake bed. Past releases, including Earthbound, Aqua Solar Cura, and Vale & Stone, have taken their titles and themes from geology and land relationships as much as from botany, treating the landscape as collaborator, as opposed just a backdrop.
If this is your first time hearing Soda Lite, worth going back through the catalogue - Earthbound (2025), Aqua Solar Cura (2022), and Vale & Stone (2019, home to the original “An Sí Gaoithe”) are all here:
Earthbound (2025)
Aqua Solar Cura (2022)
Vale & Stone (2019)
Credits
Composed, performed and mixed by Alex Last
Artwork by Daniel Hermann
Mastered by Justin Drake
Special thanks to Chloe, Hazel, Daphne, Liffey, Kria, Lloyd, Tia & Wil