This page is for all information related to the vegetable.machine.animal tour of Australia 2026.
May: Tuesday 26 – Turrbal & Jagera Land / Brisbane – – Cave Inn Experimental Night – line-up TBA Wednesday 27 – Dundarimba on Widjabul/Wia-bal country / Lismore – – Elevator ARI– line-up TBA Thursday 28 – Turrbal & Jagera Land / Brisbane – – talk @ Queensland Conservatorium Thursday 28 – Turrbal & Jagera Land / Brisbane – – Institute of Modern Art: FREE RANGE 6 w/SCRAPS, BlackBlue Tulpa, Ode2Joy Friday 29 – Turrbal & Jagera Land / Brisbane – – TBA
June: Wednesday 3 – Awabakal Land / Newcastle – – Beauford Hotel – w/ zipper clone, Obstructive, & pee wee 50s Thursday 4 – Gadigal & Wangal Land / Sydney – – Petersham Bowling Club, w/S.C.U.M, & Rapacity Friday 5 – Dharawal Land / Wollongong – – Van Q, Crown St. w/Saw In Half, Acaicafire, PENGUINSARNTREALANDNEITHERAREWE Saturday 5 – Ngunnawal & Ngambri Land / Canberra – – You Are Here, w/Harland Rust, Feemer, Sandy Ma, & Reuban Ingall Thursday 11 – Wadawurrung Land / Geelong – – Medusa Bar – line-up The Grimwoods, & Kalamaya Saturday 13 – muwinina Land / Hobart – – MONA Monday 15 – Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land / Melboure – – Morbid Monday’s at The Old Bar– Solution// Pollution, & Kalamaya Wednesday 17 – Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land / Melboure – – Footscray Records Thursday 18 – Millowl / Cowes – – Bar 151 – w/MNNQNPNTS’D, Ruinscapes, & JC Friday 19 – Dja Dja Wurrung Land / Bendigo – – Trashcult– line-up w.Wasp Dope, & Tube Failure Saturday 20 – Dja Dja Wurrung Land / Castlemaine – – Oni Streetwear– line-up w/Rex Maximus Wednesday 24 – Kaurna Land / Adelaide – – Hymn Bar, w/Wavelength (movie Film Screening), Plain Services, & ?? Thursday 25 – Kaurna Land / Adelaide – – Grace Emily Hotel, w/ Minimax, & Les Voltiguers – TICKETS Sunday 28 – Whadjuk Nyoogar Land / Perth – – on the radio, w/Furchick Monday 29 – Walyalup / Fremantle – – Fremantle Buffalo Club, – line-up w/SeNsOrY fReNzY, & Lotus Tueday 30 – Whadjuk Nyoogar Land / Perth – – Noizemachin!! – line-up w/Spiderlight, The Pianos, Elias Farben, CCCXXXIII & Jessie Smoor, & Furchick
vma will be touring with 2 new albums, available online, and from the shows – Electrical Minzu 35 [sold out on tour – still copies online and at home] & TRIO, and some copies of GUEST [sold out]
If you would like something to happen in your area while I am around, please make contact and let’s see what we can work out. I am able to provide talks and demonstrations to interested communities, civic and academic.
…and thank you to CNZ for the funding support that provides time to make this happen.
Mon: Dawn opens her orange eyes as I walk the colourless rise to a stop where a bus will, hopefully, whisk me away. I leave muwinina Land / Hobart, and aim, once again, for Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land / Melbourne.
There’s a wonderful dose of extra confidence in returning to a once-visited city. A sense of fresh familiarity and competence in navigating public transport, recognising landmarks, and feeling a little less novice than those first times around. I head to the suburb of Fitzroy and set up camp at The Nunnery, a beautiful old building next door to schools of certain religious denominations. The building’s been repurposed into accommodation for travellers, mostly young. Perhaps this is also the first time away from home, I’m guessing this from the substantial mess they leave for the cleaners each morning, and many seem to be earning a buck as Uber drivers, as evidence by the collection of scooters huddled around the front doorway.. It’s $40 for a bunk bed and $140 for a single room; I choose the former and settle in on the bottom bed as a troll under the bridge might do. I very much feel like the old man of the manor in this place. But this is not a week for declining ability; it is to be my busiest week. With the MONA show complete, I feel as if I have crossed some psychological hill. The booking was the catalytic reason for the tour, and possibly the show with the most apprehension attached — it’s certainly one of the swankiest venues I’ve ever played. A sense of “phew” now settles, as it does similarly to any hair-raising, cliff-edge drive once the precipitous moments have passed, and a flat open road stretches out in front.
But not for long. The first show is Monday night; the event is Morbid Mondays, at The Old Bar, a handy 10-minute walk from my digs. A venue whose flooring is notorious for its stickiness, but I suspect the velcro-effect is from years of spilled drinks onto the once-upon-a-time carpet. Solution // Noise Pollution is the first act. Solo drumming with an accompanying film, sound included. An excellent use of tech, and a compelling performance. Kalamaya return, last seen at the Geelong show, and deliver a much more amped performance this evening. I really enjoyed hearing them level up with so much more assertion. I play third and deliver what I think is, even as I write this, possibly the best performance to date. It was just one of those shows where everything aimed for landed as hoped; there were no tech problems, the sound was great, the pub was full, and that reciprocal energy helps ratchet up the exchange.
The next day is admin and washing day. During the day I am contacted by Cher Tan, who was at the previous evening’s show, and asks if I am keen on playing another show on the Wednesday night? Yes, is my reply, of course. The details reveal themselves eventually. The venue will be Footscray Records, a small shop located two tram lines away from Fitzroy.
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Wed: The record shop is delightfully cramped, and bursting with curiosities that I’d love to take home. My ability to buy, though, is limited by two main factors. The first is the weight limitation on my flight cases; I need to be extra considered on the weight of any purchase. The complications of me getting too excited and pushing the weight of my case over the allowed limit is an expensive complication I am motivated to avoid. The second is simply available cash. I have tried to be as attentive to minimising costs while travelling, using hard cash made from shows rather than using the credit card. An unforeseen learning from this trip has been the increasingly normal use of digital payments for tickets and merch purchases. I had anticipated more hard currency, but the reality has changed in the past few years, especially since Covid. I have needed to rapidly discover ways of receiving payments after the event; my main tool at the moment is a Wise account. But there’s no real clear and easy way, at least to me, of doing digital payments for merch at shows.
I am the only act. People huddle around the record bins, looking from whatever vantage point they can secure. It all feels close and cosy, and delightfully ludicrous. The shop’s plants are a little under-attended too, poorly, if the truth be told. So a couple of guys, with the appearance of grindcore fans, head off to a local pub to see if we can borrow a healthy specimen for the show. They return with arms full of foliage, and with leaves full of voltage.
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Thu: When I’ve told people I’m going to play in Cowes, on Millowl / Philip Island, they seemed genuinely surprised, or bemused. It appears that it is not a place that features highly on anyone’s touring schedule. To fulfil this claim though, I must first get there. The island is seven hours, by public transport, south east of Melbourne. This intrepid exploration starts first on a tram to Flinders Station, then train to Pakenham. I follow Google Maps’ advice and walk the 15 minutes to the bus stop to Cowes, of which only the name is displayed, with no time. A bloke strolls up and waits for a different bus. I find out from him that it seems pretty uncertain that any bus will take me where I want to go from this stop. He leaves. I recheck Google and it now provides another location, 8 minutes by car, and leaving in 10 minutes. I scan Uber and think about trying to make a dash for the newly suggested departure spot. I am definitely feeling a sinking sense of impending disappointment. Then, like an ancient myth, salvation comes out of the fog, except the day was clear but overcast, a bus approaches. Perhaps the deity of the bus stop heard my cursing and looked kindly upon such a sad whelp, and whispered into existence this miracle. The bus driver was more taciturn; he told me no buses, from any stops, went to where I wanted to go, and that I needed to return to the station. I went to gather up my gear and walk at the briskest pace back to the station, when the driver offered his final, and informative, missive: “Are you going to get on?” Its destination is the station! The stationmaster took some moments to establish whether any more vehicles were running that day, but delivered the short answer of “yes”. Cinderella shall go to Cowes.
I wait 30 minutes for the first bus to Koo Wee Rup. From there I wait in the cold, for an hour, for the second coach to Cowes. Further adding evidence to my lucky streak, the driver lets me on for free, and delivers me into the dark, cold, and now foggy, night of the invisible town of Cowes. The venue is a five-minute walk, and I walk into the warmth of Bar 151.
Rustic is an apt description; a once-upon-a-time outdoor space is converted and covered, there’s a roaring fire to welcome all in. It’s a coastal village, population around 7k, and a combination of money from tourism, holiday homes from Melburnians, alongside a darker edge of the types who might seek to disappear from the mainstream. It’s a contrasting community. But the crowd in the bar are sweet! Interested, enthused, curious, and super-friendly. First act is JC; he plays a solo bass set, a freeform noise set via an Acca/Dacca filter, not reliant on too many pedals or heaps of effects. It was a beaut set of crackles and rumbles. I could have listened to so much more. RuinScapes are next, Sam on drums (the show organiser) and a guitarist. And I love acts like this, genuinely. There is a beautiful phenomenon that exists on the periphery of these kinds of music, where able-bodied individuals make spaces, in a non-patronising or deficit-focused way, for people with other abilities or who might need some additional support in certain areas of their lives. It’s a genuine approach that anyone can make music, it’s all valid, and sound making is an art form that can include everybody. MNNQNPNTS’D is third, delivering a squelchy, collaged soundworld that brings to mind many of my favourite musical weirdos. That’s a fine three-for-three I have to follow, and I feel really privileged to bring my show into this community.
The venue also needs a mention. On this single site, I am told there’s maybe up to 10 small businesses: the bar, a tattoo shop, a Philippine supermarket, a store of plants and crafts, and out the front, a coffee caravan. They are all locals, who seem to have self-organised their efforts into this one endeavour. A self-initiated marketplace in which each benefits the other. As opposed to other “marketplaces” in which landlords extract a rent for a space; stalls stand side by side, but they generally feel like a collection of producers, rather than a cohesive expression of community.
The next morning we swim in the sea before the sun comes up, have breakfast, and I leave, travelling back across land, aiming for tonight’s show at Trash Cult in Bendigo.
And what a record shop Trash Cult is! So much goodness all wrapped up into one place. It’s also a bar, and a venue. It’s run by Lorelle and Mike, warm, accommodating, and genuinely enthusiastic music nuts. A snug venue that packs a punch well above its weight. Tube Failure was the first of three acts, it included bar operator Mike, and two others. I’m told that seeing Mike play live is a rare and special thing. It is a cacophonous collage of sounds emitting from three middle-aged men huddled over three laptops – it makes me think of the Weird Sisters of Macbeth, but tonight it’s the Weird Misters. Wasp Dope follows and is a maximalist barrage of modular and other electronics; the subs were pushed to their limits for this. At times like an asphyxiating dub, any breathing space available was stuffed with sound and volume. And then there’s my turn. I’ll leave this video here, generously made by Megumie Alcala, capturing the evening in such cinematic fashion.
Sat: The last show in this block is in Castlemaine, an hour from Bendigo. And if I count back from playing MONA last Saturday, this will be the sixth show inclusive of Hobart. And quite some miles have been travelled in that time as well. It’s certainly been a week of maximum exertion. Oni Streetwear is the venue for the show, and it’s a mid-afternoon gig, starting around 4pm. Oni seems to be a small business, selling bespoke clothing, a screen printing setup out the back, a small gallery for exhibition purposes, and also hosts opportunities for young people to come in and experience creativity in other formats. I’m told the shop used to be the old toy store, it seems like a comfortable historical fit for today. Rex Maximus opens the event, playing an electronic set of arpeggiated patterns which mutate into a luscious field of drone, warm and enveloping. I wrap up the afternoon, blowing bubbles, jittering metal chopsticks, flipping cymbals and other techniques I’ve learned in the world of classical drumming. The beauty of afternoon shows is that we are home for tea and rest. Sunday is slow. Walks in the woods where we discuss tiny sundews, the exotic kangaroo, the existence of the pobblebonks, and living with fire. The day closes with an overnight bus trip to Adelaide.
He sits there, preparing breakfast in the sun. The wall of the house is the back of his chair; his seat is the asphalt. Snow White bread balances at a challenging mathematical angle. The strawberry jam is thick, gelatinous, as easy to smear as a jellyfish, or a liberated viscous organ; it is clotted and resistant to reduction. I can see his thumbnail through the tram window, long and ending as the blunt end of a butter knife might. Appropriate, as the thumb is his only utensil available for sandwich construction. The clot is distributed across the surface with an awkward dexterity. That shit is sticky. The knuckle looks arthritic, aged, impractical for the privileged evenness that correct spreading requires. It will do.
I am on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land, otherwise known as Melbourne. A taxi ride transported me across the city to where I’m to stay, a co-living hotel. It’s an interesting place, a multi-level complex that aims to create some sort of community atmosphere, hosting regular communal events and activities. I can’t make my mind up as to whether it’s a distasteful way to monetize the communal experience, or a thoughtful way to decrease alienation and disconnection for the people who are living semi-permanently in the complex anyway. Maybe it’s both.
Three days of rests, repairs, and admin. The Monday is a write-off after the overnight transit; I arrived in the city just after 7am. The next day is slightly more enlivened. That evening, I learn to ride the trams. A wonderful form of transport that warms up the sound world with bells, a hefty bass rumble, and a hushed track-clatter. I go to Bar Open.
People just meander from the path to the side of the tram; all traffic stops. I don’t see any wheeled vehicle cutting through on the inside; for a moment the road is pedestrian. Back home, people get apoplectic at the installing of bicycle lanes; I can only just imagine how beetrooted their complexion would become at such liberal movement on such precious roads.
The Make It Up Club is a local institution, running now into its 28th year, a weekly experimental music event held every Tuesday at Bar Open in Fitzroy. We’ve played here a couple of times, the last being 15 years ago, and unfortunately couldn’t make it work for this trip. But to not attend while here would be remiss, and it was truly worth the effort. Headlining is Kae Takahashi on solo bass, fully immersive, unrestrained, and bombastic, interwoven with a Butoh-styled stillness. Impressive.
More wonderful and unexpected was the reconnection with Cher Tan. Cher organised a show for us in Singapore 20 years ago, and here she was playing a noise set with Pete, an equally welcoming and interesting cat. There were other reconnections, people from across the years, whose paths we’d both crossed at some point in the past. It made the night quite special.
Cher was playing the next day at The Last Chance with their Gameboy/grindcore band ESP Mayhem. A mighty fierce and intense five-piece, three on keyboards, a monster of a drummer, and Cher on a microphone. Blistering. This was followed by another set from Kae, more compelling than the night before. If I were to choose between the two nights, then this one takes priority, it was just more of everything!
The day before I leave for the Wadawurrung Land / Geelong show, I hear that one of the other band’s members has received an injury, and are no longer able to play. Snatching success from the jaws of defeat, two acts step up and into the spot made available on the stage; the show goes on.
The journey is straightforward, as is the settling into that evening’s digs. The venue is a simple five-minute walk away and is Medusa Bar, a beautiful brick longhouse down the end of an alleyway. First up is The Grimwoods, delivering sophisticated pop tunes, a delightful combination of HoodooGurus meets Talking Heads. Next is KalaMaya, who traveled down, especially from Melbourne, to play. A duo of one producing electronic beats, textures, and one skilled drummer! A crackle of tension and release, it’s an improvised set that winds its way to completion. I follow, messing up the stage in the way that I do best. Sometimes, when you finish, you get a sense that what you aim for doesn’t really land. That was my feeling this evening. Yet these things aren’t worth talking about afterwards to the people who genuinely enjoyed what they saw. Brains lie (as in personal reflection), and it’s not my place to compare my notes with others. It is good enough to trust them.
Friday is big travel. I start at Geelong and end at muwinina Land / Hobart. It is this show that kicked off the entire tour. Earlier in the year, I fired off an introductory email to MONA, roughly saying, “This is what I do, maybe it might interest your gallery?” Several months later, I received an email with an invitation to play as part of their regular programme. MONA also run the festival DARK MOFO, and that is happening simultaneously.
I travel to MONA by ferry, a stunning way to start the day, and it’s my first chance to see the actual landscape of the city, as I arrived in the dark last night. Hills and houses are the scarf that wraps around the neck of this harbour. Arriving at the pier, I am directed into a long tunnel that takes me into the heart of the hill onto which the gallery is built. I’m early, so the gear goes into storage, and I have 90 minutes to explore.
There’s a lot to take in. It feels sprawling, and disorientation finds me quicker than I find my bearings – a room that contained ever-smaller rooms, a library with walls of blank white-paged books, a reflective pool of oil, more tunnels that thunder with drones, and a most magnificent space that hosts works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Truly breathtaking in scale, paintings bigger than buildings. It is the most satisfying display to take in as my viewing time runs out.
The stage is prepared, the plants have arrived, and I assemble the equipment in the container to present my offering to the audience on the lawn. The space though feels transient, a venue in between locations. I make a point to be as open as I can, lock eyes, and ensure contact. And people remain. I’m even able to coax folk into the spare space on the stage to dance as they feel appropriate, and they do. The whole time, the sky is heavy, spittle from the clouds hints at a downpour. I finish with perfect timing — two minutes later, the sky opens in full saturation. Post-show there’s no natural space to mingle with those that saw me play, but now on the ferry home a few people make the connection and we chat in the half light.
Next day, the first task is washing. I am travelling with very few options, and it’s important to remain on top of the basic domestics. During the arvo, I take a walk to explore the free exhibits on the DARK MOFO program scattered around the city. My favourite is Trunkman, by Xiyue Cici Zhang. A show that is the polar opposite of DARK MOFO and MONA’s Gothic, edgy aesthetic. Zhang’s work is bright, playful, speculative in vision, and considers a future somewhere different from the dystopia we’re constantly told to expect in stories. It is a vision of a future being, part human, part plant, part something quite unpredictable and unknowable. There is not a hint of cynicism in the show. This is the sort of art I want to head towards.
TRIO, the new album by vegetable.machine.animal (vma), release date – 14 August 2026. This album is co-released between skirted Records and Audio Foundation Records.
TRIO feels like the completion of the first full cycle of vegetable.machine.animal. In our initial, grandiose way, we planned for TRIO to be released alongside the album GUEST in 2025 as part of the NZSM/Toi Pōneke Artist in Residence position held in 2024. We wished to present them as a couple of bookends for the possible scope from which this project might grow. A full album of ‘trio’ material was gathered, mixed … and then fully discarded as falling short of the mark required to be satisfied.
It was apparent to the ears of skirted Records that substantial work was needed to find vma’s coherent voice. After tours, residencies, explorations, failures, and a lot of playing, we are proud to present this iteration of TRIO to all who are interested in hearing.
In the first two weeks of January 2026, all the gear was installed in an old, out-of-action wooden Salvation Army hall in Island Bay. The cherry log that was gifted during the 2025 tour of Aotearoa had flourished again in a bloom of mushrooms, offering up the essential voltage to tickle the synth. Playing was daily, and hours of recordings were collected.
An invitation to play MONA fuelled the motivation to complete the album earlier than anticipated. There is nothing like a deadline to make things happen. It had to be edited, mixed, tweaked, remixed, mastered, artworks and layouts designed and completed all in short order to get to the factory for production with the hope it would return in time for the Australia tour. The efforts were compounded by simultaneously replicating exactly the same process in completing the vma album Electrical Minzu 35, .
The following text is printed inside the TRIO package.
Listen—to reverb that bounces from the wooden walls of an aging Salvation Army hall, back into the microphone. There, sound waves convert to electrical signals. On the stage sits a drum kit, with timber shells from unknown forests. From hand, the impact from wooden sticks makes drum skins sing. Beside the kit, a chunk of cherry tree—a deathbed for lifeyness. Beneath bark, mycelial threads infiltrate, feed, and flourish into fruiting bodies up on the surface. Here be mushrooms. Life contains voltage. Fluctuations, detected by sensors, connect to the modular synthesiser—where electrical impulse becomes sound wave. A living interface presents—the human responds. The circuit is continuous, spontaneous, unrepeatable.
TRIO is the response to the curious idea—“What could ‘more-than-human’ music sound like?”, music that includes more than our shared and exclusive conception. VMA, the “interspecies trio,” is our small unit of investigation. In human terms, this album could be called a solo album. However, that negates the contributions that non-human and circuited elements provide. Together, we have achieved so much more than I could alone.
The music for the tracks came first. The naming of the tracks is a relatively arbitrary process. Several titles came from provocations used on the day — provocations that set limits, directions, and parameters. Other titles are either collected from scraps of writing we have lying around the house, or from phrases that leapt from the pages of books being read at the time, authors such as John Berger, Báyò Akómoláfé, Robert Macfarlane, and Lee Hana.
All the parts are assembled and sent to the factory for production. But disappointingly, the production timeframe for this job is considerably longer than that of the previous album, Electrical Minzu. The estimated delivery date falls after my departure for the Australian tour. We request a small quantity to be delivered to an address in Sydney. The copies can be collected in the second week of the tour. The day of my flight to Brisbane comes. As we preparing to leave, a text from FedEx arrives saying the box is out for delivery – earlier than projected! For a moment, there’s hope, but that becomes dashed. We need to leave. Chrissie drops me off at the airport, I dither for a bit before heading to the departure lounge. That weird space where, once upon a time, a stamp inside your passport would create a strange sleight of hand of being in-between countries. I’m five metres from entering when a text states a box has been deposited in a shed! I contact Chrissie, and like a champ, she races back across the city with a small bundle of CDs. TRIO is delivered to the gate – available only on tour.
Thanks are offered to the following: Audio Foundation, Pyramid Club, all the glorious oddball music makers, Jess and Barry, Timothy Morel for eternal optimism and enthusiasm, CreativeNZ for funding support, Te Kōki / New Zealand School of Music, Mak@disposablebelief for the b&w photo, Kai-Yu Liu, Glory and Sam for the log that keeps giving. Special mention – Andreas Lepper, for the friendship, the instruments, and the hall! Always, always, Chrissie xxx.
In the small bedroom, a strong perfume is needed to hide the smell of ancient booze and the ‘marginal’ characters who survive in alcohol’s wake. It seems to be mostly guys, but not entirely. They occupy the floor above. This is The Beauford Hotel, a welcoming place to call home. It’s run by a publican who tolerates their quirks and challenges, as long as they can self-regulate their more alienating behaviours. This pub is the bar where my first show will be this week, and also my accommodation for the duration of my stay in Newcastle, Australia.
Marginalised is an academic word. I don’t think these residents would describe themselves as that. In their world, this place isn’t the margin, but a centre, a home, the central place where they gather their treasures, belongings, and artefacts that anchor them to this world. Academic words are just positions from lofty pedestals, where connections are made in the data, not between people. Those terms mean fuck all in the shared kitchen, where men drink beer for breakfast, share space in silent companionship, and cook enough to ensure that others, less fortunate, have something hot and substantial to eat.
My last writing focused briefly on the importance of shared and committed cultural spaces. I reckon places, like The Beauford, may also be seen as accessible and shared social spaces for a certain cohort. In these times of precarios housing, they are essential. For many, these places may be their last stop to a situation much worse.
Maybe these places hold people together in a way, precariously, when ‘culture’ or ‘society’ isn’t so welcomingly accessible or available? It’s a weird perversity that sites of entertainment seem to be used as, in some instances, emergency accommodation.
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The pool table has been moved, standing tables moved and a space of floor is cleared for the ‘stage’, an old carpeted floor in the corner of the pub on the corner of a busy road. The Wednesday night shows have become a regular feature at The Beauford, where a host of local acts, in a multitude of styles, get a chance to present their wares to whoever arrives. The set-up reminds me of assembling punk shows in pubs in the late 80’s, there’s often a hint of chaos in the air, mismatched gear is made to connect, connections are sometimes temperamental.
Starting time rolls around, and the first band have yet to return with the rest of their equipment, so it is decided I go first. The set-up requires speed and flexibility, and ultimately, and probably not surprisingly, I have some curious technical problems throughout my set. I’m not sure if it was within the synth or the choice of plant that I enlisted (pub plants are often wanting of care, maybe it was a little sad), but I’m sure no-one would really have noticed. It was still noisy fun. Next is a trio called Pee Wee 50’s, with a guy called Edo on bass who we played with last time we were in Newcastle, 15 years ago. They delivered a frenetic style of 50’s-ish rock and roll that contained an absolute commitment and energy that was totally convincing. Next was Obstructive, an electronics/singer duo. Hefty industrial sounds circa Ministry, but much crustier. The singer had a 9/10 Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) energy about him, balaclava-clad in overalls, irrepressibly jittery, and purely committed to a vast number of backflips on the spot – even after copious quantities of colourful booze! Luke, on electronics (and the shows organiser), mentioned at times the role of the heavy steel factory played in his musical development over the years. You could hear it everywhere. And he wasn’t the only one. A resident upstairs shared similar stories about the all-encompassing industrial sounds from his father’s workplace onto his developing personal musical tastes. So, with that in mind, the sounds of Obstructive carry a specific Newcastle authenticity from a time now passed. The final act for the evening is Zipper Clone, another duo, this time drums and electronics/vocals. Theres hints of Prodigy, but also more of that industrial heaviness. Maybe it’s another example of the mechanical bombast of Newcastle’s past.
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I train to Sydney the next day. I meet Dean outside the station. We met 15 years ago when we first brought mr sterile Assembly here, his band was brilliantly named Crouching 80’s, Hidden Acronym. The friendship has sustained. This show is at the Petersham Bowling Club (PBC). The reappropriating of bowling clubs seems to be a flourishing activity. Building a new culture of alternative venues in spaces that were once active in other entertainments but now appear to be in decline. The PBC has become a community-owned project, a multi-purpose venue that welcomes all, with the seemingly specific purpose of community-care in mind. One fascinating recent story is that the PBC, once acquired by the community, made the bold decision to remove ALL the pokies machines, generally a staple of revenue. It seems that the club is turning MORE profit now without the extractive, addiction-inducing, pokies machines than when they were haunting the clubs’ hallways like some vampiric robot.
First on the lineup was Rapacity, a solo act in which the drummer also plays an ingenious foot-bass (that has a pitch-controller attached to one of the drumsticks for note adjustment), vocals, noise, and loops. It was an exciting concoction of d-beat, noise, and collaged sounds. An impressive amount of noise from one human. Next was S.C.U.M, named after the Valerie Solonas manifesto, the Society for Cutting Up Men. A harsh noise project that infused beats, industrial chain and metal sheet percussion, and some prerecorded spoken-word. It was compact and visceral. I played last, and all the electronics, plant and circuit, performed much more reliably than the previous evening. And even more wonderful was that in the audience were two people who I had met separately at Jogja Noise Bombing in 2024, and someone else who attended our talk at Ting Shuo Hear Say in Tainan, Taiwan, at the end of 2025. It would seem, after all, that it is indeed a small world.
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Some mooching around Sydney occurred on the Friday morning, visiting the record store 19th Nervous Breakdown, which is the new iteration of the once-upon-a-time Black Wire Records, the store that we first played in 15 years ago. 19th now stock a few copies of vma albums available for purchase – go visit your local music dealer.
After lunch, we left in the direction of Wollongong for that evenings show at Van-Q. The store is an eclectic secondhand clothing store at first glance. But walk to the end of the store, turn right, and put off the, appears a cute stage in all its pending raucous glory. Mild-mannered store by day, rocking all-ages venue in the evening! It’s a very sweet spot.
AcaciaFire is the first of four acts. A bass/drum/gat trio that give me Fugazi/Shellac/Slint vibes, but maybe none of them are references, and this is just me showing my age. Very tasty compositions that swing and swoon between lush and heavy. Next is the band with the best name, Penguinsarentrealandneitherarewe. Bass/drums/gat/and dual vocals. Ambitious songs with bold dynamics, screamo in style, and a combination of melodic vocals and full-throated roaring. Dancing ensued. I am third and deliver as fully as I hoped to. And finally, Saw in Half finish the evening. A spectacular racket! Fantastic compositions, honed through years of individual graft, culminating into an intense and explosive presentation. It’s feisty and fierce. And this leaves me elevated, as I walk the midnight streets of Wollongong to the backpackers, where I spend a tiny number of hours snoozing before the bus to Canberra in the morning.
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The last show in this block of four is at You Are Here in Canberra, which is the first show they have run in the newly acquired space. I glean small bits of info on how this collaborative project is set up to help support and nurture the development of local creative communities. Alongside this, others are trying to identify empty spaces in the city and do ‘reverse gentrification’, bring artists and creativity back into the Canberra CBD, as part of a revitalisation project.
Feemer is the first act, a solo performance of pedals, guitar, vocals and laptop. It’s a fascinating presentation in the insistence of keeping everything so deliberately quiet and empty, there was plenty of interesting sonic textures weaving in and out – volume is easy, holding the quietness in place takes a particular type of bravery. It was beautiful. Sound artist Sandy Ma follows with a performance based upon their body of work ‘Touching Wires’, an interactive woven mat threaded with circuitry, generating sound upon physical contact. She was presenting a workshop the following day that I couldn’t attend, but I would like to have found out more about the thinking behind the work. It also makes me think about the place of ‘installation’ projects in ‘performance’ spaces – where audiences differ and varying degrees of information are conveyed. This is something very relevant to the vma project, I want it to stand both on its own sonic merit, as well as being able to present to a more talk-based audience. It’s an interesting tension to negotiate. I think Ma’s work totally stands on its sonic merit, and I like being left with questions. Harland Rust followed. A duo of electronics, laptop, and bass guitar, presenting a field of tectonic subs and tinnitus hiss, augmented with some fingering of the bass, adding unpredicted textures into the maelstrom. Reuben Ingall was fourth in the lineup, bringing to the stage a bread crate of electronics and a microwave. He then proceeded to overcook a pie, setting the cooker to 20 minutes, using the sound of the machine as a background palette for a collage of sounds and words. It was the cutest thing I’ve seen to date on this tour, I liked it very much.
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Sunday night in Goulburn, a small town with a strong rural feel. I’m sitting by a gas fire, waiting for the midnight train to Melbourne. I had to go north from Canberra, wait four hours before finally being able to go south. There is a small halo of warmth being emitted from the fireplace, but outside, it feels like a frost will arrive before the train.
From a rolling window, the view goes all the way to the Moon. It is so full of itself, I watch it settle down for the day, encouraging the Sun up in the opposing direction. There’s horizons to the left and right, I feel as if I am wearing the space travelers as earrings. Terrestrial mist lifts as our rock turns towards the light. Night is replaced by long, shadowed fingers stretching out in awakeness.
This train is southbound to Newcastle, Australia.
———
One round of a week has passed, from Monday to Monday on the TRIO tour of the southern landmass. It’s taken this long to find this time to write.
It’s not uncommon, at the start of a major project, to have feelings that ricochet from exuberant enthusiasm to wobbly confidence. The greater the wait, the bigger the swing. So it’s fortunate then that my first show is on the first night after the first full day. Distraction redirects worry, focus is found, there’s work to do, and months of preparation and planning are now converted to action.
Show number one is at the Cave Inn Experimental music night, in downtown Brisbane. The Inn is a pizza & beer joint in what seems like a semi-industrial section of the cities CBD. I do not think many come here by accident. Arrival is intentional. It is a trans-welcoming space in an area of panel and paint shops.
The audience is hearty and attentive. I play first in a choice to bookend the evenings drummers at each end of the show. It’s a good first performance, cauterising any persisting doubts I may have entertained earlier. I have a freshly plucked mushroom from a roundabout in Tingalpa as a bandmate, and it certainly brought the magic. The second act is solo, leaving me with the impression of J-Pop-with-guitar-solos-by-The-Shaggs; the final act is a jazz-metal trio from Sydney, sax/gat/drums, they have made a massive road trip just for this night. They are robust, tight, and forthright. Tomorrow they make the return trip.
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I have no idea what shape the city takes. This bus could simply be traveling the insides of the belly of a glowworm cave for all I know. The streetlights dispense tight conical brightness, and the blackest scarf of night sits upon the lamp poles’ shoulders. I see the inverse silhouette of houses, evidence of our arrival into habitation, floating rectangles of illuminated glass, and lace in this black and wet night. This is Lismore, the destination for this bus, and my show. It seems to be a city of water and thunder.
I am collected by Michael, and swiftly enfolded into the lovely creative community that circulates the venue/gallery Elevator ARI. People gather into chairs and cushions as the first act, Noise xhurxh, assembles. It’s an open invite band. A message is sent into the ether, or at least a chatroom, announcing a show – who then turns up is who turns up, that is the band for the night. There are a collection of acoustic and electronic instruments, and the boundary of stage/audience is broken when one of the performers shares his electronic machinery with this watching audience. The watcher becomes performer. The P.A funnels hums, glitches, effected voices, drums punctuate and rattle inside it all – it sounds perplexingly Australian.
Can we call Noise xhurxh a community project? I think so. But something like this is made more possible by having regular, welcoming, and dependable access to a space – that space is Elevator ARI. The venue/gallery has been functioning for a number of years now. It was drowned in a massive deluge several years ago but has been reactivated with funding, enabling the installation of measures to enhance its flood resilience as protection into the future. Surely, this provides security and stability of space for the community who utilise it. I hope it is unlikely, with that sort of civic investment, that the doors are going to shut any time soon, at least by political administrative means, places like this are essential.
After the show I camp out in a studio/shed, I have a short sleep. I am introduced to a digesting, and wild, carpet python living, currently, in the overhead beams of the shed. I’m told it’s safe. I don’t think I’m worried, I’ve just never spent a night with one. I later discover that the main impediment to sleep is a crowd of hungry mosquito, but eventually it must become too cold and they disperse. I sleep four hours and then catch a the early Thursday morning shuttle-bus back to Brisbane.
I’m transported away, the city still holding tight the cloak of invisibility, this time it’s a tangled shawl of fog, cloud, and dawn.
— — —
Photo by Ben Shannon
I return to the city to present an ‘Introduction to vegetable.machine.animal’ to PhD. students at the Queensland Conservatory mid-afternoon. I follow on after a fascinating presentation from Sami performer, Hilda Landsman. At times, concepts from my work mingle alongside ideas she discussed, yet at other moments in the discussion, I point out that I think my work is aimed more at ‘western’ cultural perspectives – in that I mean that there are many examples of Indigenous cultures who have expressions of human life inextricably intertwined with the non-human. I reflect on my personal cultural background – that concept has been a void.
On the bus ride to Lismore, I was contacted by Leighton, who at very short notice offered me a spot to perform at an event he was hosting the next day. It was confirmed Thursday mid-morning. So, with that new addition in mind, I uber across the Story Bridge to the Institute of Modern Art, the longest running private art dealer gallery in Australia. It is an evening of quirky Pop, of which I qualify my engagement as being POPulated by microbes. I am given freshly collected mushrooms and toadstools from people who saw me play on Tuesday. These become my bandmates for the night. But they are initially cantankerous and withholding of voltage. It is an awkward beginning, but midway through the voltage picks up, and the set tumbles along swimmingly.
— — —
Fridays show is as far from the shiny dealer gallery as you could get. It’s a squatted gig organised by ATOPOS, underneath the M7 offramp on the main motorway to Ipswich. I would never have found it without assistance. Before any equipment arrives, the site is checked to see if it is the home for any rough-sleepers, it looks like it has been in the past but not tonight. Drums, speakers, and everything else is lugged across grassy flood banks, avoiding the boggy slush hiding under the grass. Just before darkness descends, the generator arrives, and all equipment flashes into life. Sounds are checked as 16-wheelers thunder overhead. The first act is deep under the bridge. In the almost pitch black, the only visible light is the reflection caught from the surface of a mini-lake of surface flooding. It adds nothing to where we crouch. An electrical device makes a cymbal sing continuously, a violin is played quietly, almost imperceptible at times, and moving through the darkness is a voice singing something like a lullaby in Czech. There were maybe 30 of us trolls under the bridge for the performance. I’m second, playing my fifth show for this week (I also played the Saturday, back home, before I left). The night has truely fallen, all I can see are attentive silhouettes, I have a bromeliad for a bandmate and it is interestingly active even though the sun has long gone – many photosynthesising plants go ‘quiet’ after dark – bedtime, I guess. Third is an electronic set, heavy and repetitive irregular loops, the performer crouches gargoyle-like, hunched in intensity, belching a hefty bottom end from the gapping maws of speakers. Finally, a duo of improvised clarinet and electronic and irregular tabla play, a groove is suggestively hidden in the pattern recognition of the mind. People have found it and are swaying away.
I watch planes pass over, flying foxes settle in tree tops, and I feel the weariness of the first week settle in satisfaction.
The show packs up, and we do the cross-country run with gear back to vehicles, then back to home.
Thanks to: Ben Shannon, Boddhi, Yvette of ATOPOS, Queensland Conservatory, Leighton and Sandra, Institute of Modern Art, William, Michael, Swerve, Shaun and Harriet
With thanks to CNZ for the funds to make this possible
Friday 22 May :at the wonderful Pyramid Club – Jeff Henderson’s Pōneke Orchestra of Percussion, & DSLB $15 presales, $20 on door ($10 underwaged)
Jeff Henderson’s Pōneke Orchestra Of Percussion is: Jeff Henderson – baritone saxophone, Simon O’Rorke – Haken Continuum, Isaac Smith, Riki Gooch, Daniel Beban – Percussion, Electronic Percussion
New music for percussion and saxophone
DSLB The solo project of Chrissie Butler, DSLB is an improvised mash-up of ancient record players, purring keyboards, kitchen utensils and found objects. Soundtracks for short films and hand drawn comics are also residents in the lunch box.
$15 presales via UTR $20 door sales ($10 unwaged) Special thanks to CNZ for supporting Pyramid Club’s programme
Saturday 23 May: Skip the Light: Sound, Pop, & Noise Festival: Ride the tide of wgtn’s finest sound, pop and noise artisans in the classical surrounds of Dom Polski Polish Association Hall. featuring the visuals of Lady Lazer Light and Vizshun.
Featuring: Varda, Ciguatera, Welcomer, Yang Star, Coin Laundry, Jack Nicotine, Silicon Tongue, Benny’s Videos, vegetable.machine.animal with a special performance from 花溪 Flowerstream (Tāmaki Makaurau).
kindly supported by the A Low Hum – Winter Fund. Music 6pm – midnight. Dom Polski is unfortunately not a wheelchair accessible venue.
Electrical Minzu 35, by vegetable.machine.animal [vma] : a site-specific recording project, undertaken during October/November 2025, while on residence in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan.
Between the laneways off Minzu, Xinyi, Jinhua, and Chenggong Road is Ting Shuo Hear Say, a space that has sound at the centre of its purpose. For two months vma and DSLB called this residency home and a base for musical exploration, connection, and touring.
In these narrow thoroughfares that weave between the main roads, green-space is rare. Yet people install potted greenery to soften the concrete and marble, and wild-seeded plant-life thrives in the gaps and cracks. At these potted assemblies, and in close proximity to wheels of scooters and feet, vma would connect the leaves of Eternity Plants, ferns, and other flora to the modular synth via sensors. These sensors detect invisible voltage, bio-signals, inside the plants, signals that flow into the circuitry of the synth, converting the imperceptible electrical fluctuations into sound.
The environmental sounds audible to human perception are also, simultaneously, recorded. Conversations, dogs, vehicles, silence, jet fighters, and echo. The sonic interpretation of the internal world of plants, and the sound world of these laneways are then bound together, capturing moments of multiple lives lived in real time, seemingly seperate yet intimately connected.
This project takes place in public spaces: a cafe frontage, outside a Community University Project, in the carpark of Ting Shuo, and at the entrance to a local electrical repair shop. People were curious, asking questions, and were interested to listen to and interact with the process during the recording sessions. These electronic sounds, interpretations of the invisible aliveness of plants, offered an unexpected shift in perspective. Via the ears, this small part of the world just got a little bigger.
Only one recording contains overdubs. Early on in the process additional percussion was added, and then mostly removed as it added very little. There are also pre-recorded sounds stored in a sampler on the synth that were gathered during the residency; the strings of a Guzheng, the percussive sounds of tables and water containers, the plasma arc of Hsinchu artist Kai-Yu Lin’s Somatic Plasma Resonator – these sounds are all triggered by plant voltage.
Electrical Minzu 35 is released on digital, and physical [CD], format. It is available for purchase via Bandcamp and Subvert, and at shows.
Thanks: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Nigel Brown, and Esme, at Ting Shuo Hear Say. Te Kōkī/ New Zealand School of Music for use of studio. Creative NZ for funding. Kai-Yu Lin for the sounds from the Somatic Plasma Resonator. William at Cafe Bar, Fangi Yi Liu, Chen En He, OOOnie, and Cia Himiân Lí in Tainan. Also: Lars of Colour Domes, Immanuel Dannenbring, DJ Rex Chen & Buddha Tiger Dog, Reuben Zahl, Chang Deng-Yao. Made Mantle Hood at the TNNUA, Tainan National University of the Arts. The local 7/11, and thanks always to Chrissie xxx!
It may feel like it’s been a bit hibernate-y sin ce Taiwan, but that is truely not the case.
2026 has, as I’m sure you will be well aware, well and truely started, and shesh!! The madness of king Trump, our own invisible PM in times of crisis, the upending of global habits and fantasies (USA- land of the Free…pfft) into more uncertain territory, and all the rest… it’s like some weird dystopian’s wet-dream.
We, however, have been quietly getting on with doing what we do.
SHOWS: Friday 30 Jan: vegetable.machine.animal(v.m.a) is playing at the POWER 2 PŌNEKE, a fundraiser collecting $$ for Wāhine ora o Te Waimāpihi/Wellington Women’s Health Collective. 13 Garrett St, from 8pm Saturday 31 Jan: DSLB performing on Night 2 of the Anna Fält & Ira Hadžić season at Pyramid Club Saturday 21 Feb: Quarry Concert #9: vegetable.machine.animal, Bone Chapel, and Tondo: 104 Ellice St, Mount Victoria, Wellington 6011
Anna Fält & Ira Hadžić season at Pyramid Club
Drawing blog: A beautiful new set of drawing has been posted up at chrissiebutler.com – please go and check it out. Also, we invite you to subscribe if you’d like to receive sporadic notifications into your email when new images are post.
Recording: vegetable.machine.animal has completed an intensive two-week period of recording in early Jan. The focus of this is the companion release to Guest, though this album will be collaborator-free, it will present the trio on its own.
The v.m.a recordings from Taiwan are also close to completion. Really looking forward to sharing them.
Social Media: We have set up a profile on the new platform Upscrolled. @skirted We hope it manages to unshitify the world of online connection.
Funding: Kieran is thrill to be a recipient of CNZ Creative Fellowship funding for 2026. This will free up time for much more dedicated music making and playing. If you are interested in having vegetable.machine.animal come and perform/present then please contact us at: skirtedrecords@tuta.com
The last week of the Tainan residency is coming to an end. We’ve started the packing and wrapping up of projects, ideas, and connections.
It’s been a time of many things. One such thing has been the wonderful opportunity to be based in a single location, a home-base if you will, where we can settle to concentrate on projects, as well as use it as a launchpad to tour from. A place that we can travel away from for shows over weekends and then return to familiarity to rest, reset and regather.
It’s a privilege to travel to play shows. It asks a lot from locals to spend precious time and energy on the committed organising and hosting events. We always aim to make it worth their while. Sometimes we were able to jump on an already existing show, and other-times a show was initiated in response to our interest in an area. To all those people (Lars, Fang Yi, Immanuel, Rex Chen, Reuben, Deng Yao) we offer up our thanks and gratitude.
The moving around has also provided a snapshot opportunity to witness what is happening with experimental music in Taiwan. It seems healthy and burgeoning scene. There are stable venues (as stable as a venue can be) that offer space for regular performances, there’s people on the ground with ongoing energy to organise, people with musical curiosity to draw upon to perform, and people who hold the important role of ‘appreciative audience’.
From the early stages of our organising, it quickly becomes apparent that Taiwan is well-networked. Various people freely shared information on who we should make contact with in other centres, and often the crossover of names and emails was frequent. People across the cities and regions seemed to have a current handle on who was organising elsewhere, interconnection is a healthy sign of an active and vibrant community.
Included in our tour schedule was our end of residency show at Ting Shuo. We spoke about our history of music making, through mr sterile Assembly to the current projects. Chrissie facilitated a drawing workshop, based on a practice by US illustrator Lynda Barry. Check out Chrissie’s drawings at Picture This, she’s beautifully captured to paper some of our most memorable moments. To wrap up the evening, DSLB/vma presented a joint performance to the good people of Tainan. Thank you Ting Shuo for hosting us!
In our last week, we met up with musicians Fangi Yi Liu, Chen En He, Ooonie, and Nigel at Ting Shuo for an afternoon of improvised goodness. A full afternoon of sound-making with new friends, audibly solidifying the beautiful connections we’ve made over the last seven weeks.
And finally, Kieran had an opportunity to present vegetable.machine.animal at TNNUA, the Tainan National University of the Arts. Over two hours Kieran discussed, demonstrated, and performed v.m.a to students from ethnomusicology and music departments. Alice, from Ting Shuo, brilliantly supported with interpreting skills. The performance became very cosy as the students got closer and enveloped the stage. It felt like a mutually lively and interactive conversation spanning from mycelium, punk rock, Mad Max, Bruno Latour, and tips for students wanting to explore musical improvisation.
Many thanks and gratitude to everyone we’ve met over theist two months. You all made us feel so welcome, you freely offered suggestions of things to do or places to eat, you stopped and wanted to chat, and you took interest in the projects and sounds that we brought to Taiwan. Our experience would have been so much less for not having had met you. Till the next time. And finally, our immense thanks to Alice, Nigel(and Esme) of Ting Shuo Hear Say for enabling this trip to become a possibility. It will certainly be one that remains in our memories with great fondness. Gratitude galore!!! xxx
skirted Records 