Plants Can Dance - 14th Sept
London Plants Can Dance residency at Hideout returns this Sunday 14th Sept. Auntie Flo live at Jazz Cafe, 23rd Oct. Birds Of Paradise coming soon
Plants Can Dance, our exploration into plant and fungi bioelectrical music, returns this Sunday. We have a packed line up, which aims to make best use of the space. 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.
Biosonification Workshops (3-5pm)
We’ll 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)
We’ve invited 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.
They’ll be joined by Plants Can Dance residents, myself 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, I hope you can make it on Sunday. TICKETS here!
Auntie Flo feat Andrew Ashong Live at Jazz Cafe, 23rd October
Tickets are selling nicely for our Jazz Cafe album launch. We’ll announce next week that Andrew Ashong will be joining us for night, to DJ from his extensive collection and also join the Auntie Flo band. It’s a major coup for us to have him, as he hasn’t performed music over the past few years.
We’ve also got a world class drummer who cannot be named and still hopeful that Mandela’s visa will arrive so he can jet over from Kenya for the night to sing Green City.
Sijya is joining us on support duties, flying in from her India tour.
The show is a special release party for the new album Birds Of Paradise, being released on A State Of Flo 23rd October.
Album Launch dates:
27/9 - Auntie Flo live at Sub Club, Glasgow
17/10 - Auntie Flo live at Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
18/10 - Auntie Flo live/DJ at Small Town Club, Dundee
23/10 - Auntie Flo full live band at Jazz Cafe, London
Thanks to all recent paid supporters! 10% of your subscriptions goes to Earth Percent charity. The rest goes to funding more explorations into connecting the bioloigical world with the electronic music one :)