Category Archives: Album

GUEST Album Release, Exhibition and Tour

GUEST has grown into a beast, a beautiful, shimmering monster-body of work that is a full culmination of the 2024 residency.

GUEST has become an album, excerpts from collaborative recording sessions October-December 2024, edited and mixed into 13 tracks, to be released on LP, CD and digital. The album launch is May 30 at Pyramid Club. Performing alongside vegetable.machine.animal with be album guest musicians Chrissie Butler, indigogue brown, Kedron Parker, Timothy Morel, Gemma S Thompson and David Long.

GUEST the exhibition opens at Toi Pōneke on Friday May 30, 5.30pm. There will be a short vegetable.machine.animal performance, but mostly it’ll be a celebration. The exhibition will be centred around hound interspecies sound installation. Alongside this will be images painted during this process, Leadlight window, and the launch of the book SOUNDBITTEN, personal sound stories capturing earworms, aural observations, accidental hearings and imaginary backing tracks.

There are four weekend event during the performance, three concerts and a panel talk. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to perform again individually with DSLB, Ruby Solly and Andrew Faleatua. The talk, called A Guest among the Guest, facilitated by K Monaghan, Assoc. Prof. Dr Julie Deslippe [Victoria University School of Biological Sciences] and Dr Eli Elinoff [Victoria University School of Social and Cultural Studies].

And then we go on tour!!! All date below but will continue to be updated as more events finalised.

Many thanks to Te Kōkī – New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University, and Toi Pōneke for the ongoing support in completions of this project, Audio Foundation Records, Pyramid Club and to all there others who have helped out along the way!

PRESS RELEASE

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

Led by drummer Kieran Monaghan, the project transforms living data from plants and fungi into voltage, translated into sound via modular synthesizer. Monaghan responds in real time, creating a feedback loop between human, organism, and machine.Their debut album, GUEST, was recorded during the 2024 Sonic Artist Residency (Creative New Zealand / NZSM / Toi Pōneke) and emerged through open-ended, intuitive sessions.

A diverse group of collaborators was invited to join the process, including Kedron Parker, Nico Buhne, Bill Wood, Ruby Solly, Indigique Brown, David Long, Andrew Faleatua, Andy Wright, Gemma Thompson, Timothy Morel, Mo H. Zareei, Tae Kyung Seo, Issac Smith, and Chrissie Butler.Rather than guiding the music, contributors were invited to follow it—adding their voices to a living, shifting ecology of sound. The result is an album that is rhythmic, irregular, immersive, and alive.GUEST is co-released by Audio Foundation Records (Tāmaki Makaurau) and skirted Records(Te Whanganui-a-Tara).

Kieran Monaghan is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, writer, recording artist and sound engineer based in Te Whanganui-A-Tara. He is a prolific creative and organiser, with an irrepressible DIY ethic, known for his experimental and innovative approach to performance and sound making.

ALBUM RELEASE TOUR

May
Friday 30 – ALBUM LAUNCH – Pyramid Club – with Chrissie Butler, indigogue brown, Kedron Parker, Timothy Morel, Gemma S Thompson and David Long – TICKETS

June
Friday 6 – Exhibition Opening , Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, Pōneke/Wellington – 5.30pm
Saturday 7 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and DSLB, Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry
Saturday 14 – Panel Talk – Guest among the Guests – A discussion exploring the intersection of creativity, biological sciences, and anthropological perspectives: Facilitated by Kieran Monaghan, Dr Julie Deslippe, Dr Eli Elinoff – 1pm – free entry
Saturday 21 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and Ruby Solly – Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry
Saturday 28 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and Andrew Faleatua – Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry

July
Thursday 17 – The Blue House, Patea
Friday 18 – Last Place, Kirikiriroa/Hamilton – with Moon Hotene and Halcyon Birds
Saturday 19 – Instore – Flying Out Records, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, 2pm
Saturday 19 – Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland – v.m.a with Taekyung Sea, O/PUS and Oxsen Ox
Thursday 24 – Common Room, Heretaunga /Hastings – with Invisible Plain
Friday 25 – Snails, Te Papa-i-Oea./Palmerston North – with Powers,
Saturday 26 – Porridge Watson, Whanganui – with XRVR & ROC///OPT/
Sunday 27 – Common Ground Presents, Pae Tū Mōkai/Featherston – with indigogue brown
Thursday 31 – Brayshaw Park Chapel, Te Waiharakeke/Blenheim – with Twin Rudders
August
Friday 1 – Space Academy, Ōtautahi/Christchurch – with Cuticles and Haunts
Sunday 3 – Union Chapel, Ōhinehou/Lyttleton – Tropical Hot Dog Night! – with Greg Larking, Beth Hilton, Taipua Adams, Gemma Syme, Nic Woollaston, Rory Dalley, Dave Imlay
Wednesday 6 – Te Atamira, Tāhuna/Queenstown – solo
Friday 8 – Live to air on Radio One
Friday 8 – The Crown, Ōtepoti/Dunedin – with HōHā, Sewage and Murgatroyd
Saturday 9 – Threes and Sevens Records, Waihōpai/Invercargill – with Murgatroyd and Hattford

DSLB Driving Creek installation live

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For the month of November in 2023, Kieran and I headed to the Coromandel to be Artists-in-Residence at Driving Creek Railway and Pottery. The fruit of those 4 weeks for me was the album Driving Creek, a multi-layered soundscape mapping dawn til dusk.

For the potters-in-residence, there is a provocation to leave a piece of work. As someone who works with sound, leaving an artefact took a bit more thinking. But now Driving Creek, the album, is “installed” in the Driving Creek, the location and community. A poster (see below) with a QR code takes listeners to the album. Tourists can listen whilst waiting for the train, residents and staff can listen whilst doing the dishes, laying rails, or throwing pots. Everyone can listen for free, and for a small fee, the album can be downloaded.

The poster has been up for a few days, and we can see from the stats that people are dipping in for a listen.

If you haven’t had a listen, we’d welcome your ears. The album has been warmly received, and I think it’s the best solo work I’ve made to date.

And here’s the poster with a photo of me recording the “Down Pour” track above, using all the discarded cups.

Many thanks to Kieran for the design of the poster, to Callum for the thumbs up and to Riccardo for herding cats and getting the posters up.

Review: Onyx Music Review of DSLB

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Skirted Records is a Pōneke (Wellington) based, Aotearoa (New Zealand) label, and they have released the EP “Pass-On-Ings” by a project called DSLB, which is the experimental electronic spawn of Chrissie Butler, who is also one half of Mr Sterile Assembly.

So, we start on “1” with its gradual build-up of horn noise, with minute wavering within their held notes, so if one listens carefully, plus a growing drone in the background. Those held notes are intense and seemingly take on a life of their own. The warbling and rattling nature of “2” makes you think that this is a machine. What sort of machine? Who knows, but the rhythmic noises it makes are very pleasing, and sounds it makes are like the motor had lost its casing, as it is left to run.

In “3,” for the first minute, the sound is so low, you are not sure if anything is playing at all, but gradually you perceive the gentle beeping, as the music blooms, delicate and reverberating. Slowly emerging strains of melody are extruded, like a sea shanty in syrup, and maybe it was suddenly consumed by the waters, for all goes quiet. Track “4” is the loudest, though for me, it might also be the most poignant, as if there is a loneliness within the horn like sounds, calling out to the world without any reply, other than the random rhythms.

There is a fragility to the EP, with the music a mixture of instruments and electronic programming. The softest of sounds holds as much attention as the loudest, with each note and drone weaving a soundscape. DSLB is opening up new worlds with Pass-On-Ings.

ORIGINAL LINK

Pass-On-Ings: The New DSLB CD

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It’s here. We have the very beautiful Pass-On-Ings in our hands and now you can have it too, available from our Bandcamp page.

Pass-On-Ings is a work in 4-parts that maps an arc of time: The last weeks, days, and hours shared with my mum. The “instrumentation” is a weave of found sounds, sounds that found me, field recordings and ancient keyboards. It’s a spacious, light-filled listen and I’m pretty proud of where it landed.

Pass-On-Ings was initially commissioned as a podcast for the Pyramid Club (thank you Johnny Marks). It has been exquisitely remixed and mastered by Stephen Cole from What Studio in Liverpool.

Huge thanks also to Kieran for taking my photos and making such classy artwork. And to Mobineko for awesome as ever production.

DRONEmusic revealed

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So it had come to our attention, that our final show, is also an album release show. Hadn’t really planned it that way but sure why not… so we’re going to release our new album HELLo properly into the world… and by default then we are also making this our release show for the album GOODBYE as well.

So I thought I’d take a wee bit of your time to chat about some of it’s content

DRONEmusic is not, as some might assume, about the sound art of the same name. It IS about the devices used for surveillance, conflict, and now delivering pizza.

The inspiration for the structure of the song comes from an incredible set of poems by Teju Cole called Seven short Stories About Drones.

Released onto Twitter in 2013, Cole composed this succinct tweets with the opening line of seven popular works of fiction. This opening was then swiftly followed up with an abrupt ending regarding Drone warfare in some way. I read somewhere that it was an attempt to engage middle-class liberal and literate folk into the horror of this new technology.

Our adaption moves away from literature and the the targets for assassination in our verses are political, indigenous, social and spiritual leaders.

The book Drone Theory by Grégoire Chamayou was also an important read, alongside other only reporting on massacres, events and mishaps…like the destruction of a wedding.

Our Lyric:

Hanging on the cross will break the pattern

Draw attention from afar

Baptize troublemakers in their ashes

Incite rapture in a tiny star

Waiting for a bus and feeling nervous

Someone’s watching Rosa sitting there

At a job that’s mostly boring

Till the targets sitting in crosshairs

Reaching up, her hand in Nana’s

The Reaper locks in on their stride

Lining up the cross on Whina

Collateral damage tallied for their side

Growing up in a poorer part of town

Locally, Lomu’s hope was not so known

He’d pull a crowd, to the game

Send a Signature Strike, to shut it down

Martin had a dream and a need to speak

A way with words to avert the violence

The Predator locked on his open mouth

The microphone broke as cries filled the silence

River cools the feet of united voices

Gandhi hears a whine cutting through the din

Mozzie’s on the hunt for a feed

A Hellfire Missile turned it all to steam

Silhouette on the snow, it’s not a dove Put the Drone to work

There’s money to be made, infertile plains Put the Drone to work

Pull up the pegs, on Surveyor’s lines Put the Drone to work

Weaponise the laws, just point and shoot Put the Drone to work

On the land and in the sea, Everywhere and Everyhere

In the tech and In the fear, In atmos- and psychosphere

Mine the sky, mine the sky, mine the sky, mine the sky.

Review: Muzic.Net.Nz

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New Zealand’s globetrotting punk rockers, drummer/vocalist Kieran Monaghan and bassist/vocalist Chrissie Butler, release their sixth and final album twenty-two years, two months, and five days from the date of their inaugural show.

In 2001, Mr Sterile Assembly was an unlikely three-piece; guitar, drums, and trombone. Over many years and manifestations, the band from the end of the world with something to say found people and places with ears to hear it. Collecting luminary musicians and collaborators like Aaron Lloydd, Cara Conroy-Low, Chris O’Connor, Dan Beban, Dave Mike, Elisa Kersley, Francesca Mountfort, Jana Te Nahu Owen, Jeff Henderson, Miles Climo, Sarsha Douglas and Vlada Plackic along the way, Mr Sterile Assembly (MrsA) went on to support famed acts such as Crass, Sabot, Jello Biafra, and Miss Moon. HELLo (alongside simultaneously released EP Goodbye) is the final note of a lauded run.

Guest appearances include Hannah Salmon, vocalist for Unsanitary Napkin and Displeasure, Adam Tomasek – trumpet from the Czech group Uz Jsme Doma, long established noisenik Indra Menus from Yogyakarta, Indonesia and the fungi influenced electronics of Pōneke based vegetable.machine.animal. Drums and bass were recorded by Vanya of scumbag college studios. All else recorded, except guest tracks, were recorded at Happy Valley. HELLo was mixed and mastered by Stephen Cole at What Studios Liverpool, UK.

Catastrophic Engine sets a familiar tone for the new album with a relentless two note melody over driving cymbals and syncopated hits on the dry snareless tenor between seamless dips from the primary meter. Due to the mixtape nature of the collection, lyrics of the Orwellian monologue are less discernible by ear than in past releases but are well worth looking up! They read like poetry and sing like punk. Group singing underscores the communal nature of the project/movement with a variety of varied, cartoonish timbres reminiscent of a Rocky Horror Picture Show chorus.

For some unknown reason, track number two on any album is always a favourite. Run Peter Run is a classic from statement to execution. The bass rips along like an engine giving pursuit beneath increasingly urgent, threatening, and varied utterances of “run, Peter, run.” My first thoughts were of Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit” and a vintage children’s song called Run, Rabbit, Run in which “every Friday is rabbit pie day.” Upon googling, I came across an apparently popular Christian song also called Run, Peter, Run which goes, “Run Peter, run! Go tell your friends! Run Peter, run! Jesus rose again!” Both potential references make fine political social commentary in my mind, but the final lyrics ” – “’68 Olympic Game, Starters gun Outer lane, Silver race Winning fame, Dias rise Changing fate” – clarifies reference to the story of Peter Norman – Australian Olympian who stood solidly alongside fellow Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who became infamous for the Black Power salute on the dais during the medal ceremony. Norman’s willingness to stand beside Smith and Carlos earned the ire of the institutionally racist Australian authorities. Forty years passed before the Australian government offered a posthumous apology to Norman for the treatment he received for standing in ally-ship with Carlos and Smith in the fight for justice. “The right act costs more, conscience like a crime, divisions laid open, where is your line?” The song’s opening refrain, “Run, Peter, run” becomes even more sinister as one imagines the utterance from the lips of the law.

Historical reviews that describe MrsA as “cohesive” and “challenging”, “hardboiled but somehow never difficult to listen to”, “at times is brilliant”, and having “a slight sense of claustrophobia, a threat of some sort, with song subjects based in the harsher realities” still ring true. The gradual introduction of more electronic moments and motifs suggests the chronological evolution of the band and contributions of collaborators along the album. Topics which fail to escape the final judgement of Mr Sterile Assembly include conspiracy theorists, confirmation bias, classism, climate change, and the pitfalls of capitalism. The final note of the album and of Mr Sterile Assembly’s notable career encapsulates all this in a song called Didn’t. In a breathless, wailing, wall of driving bass and drums, Mr Sterile Assembly sums up their message for us. “We didn’t survive [insert every aforementioned topic and more] just to roll over.” MrsA leaves us with a final call for defiance, and hope.

Original Link

HELLo, Goodbye

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Thursday 13 September 2001 was the first ever performance of the group that grew into mr sterile Assembly. Then it was a three piece of guitar, drums and trombone.

22 years, two months and five days later we release the new full length mr sterile Assembly album HELLo. It has taken a bit longer than planned to release this beast but several major life events got in the way, plus broken bones and a global pandemic.

But HELLo is complete and it’s a beauty.

The drums and bass were recorded by Vanya of scumbag college studios, a great documenter of most of the recorded punk music from this neck of the woods for many years. All other recordings, including vocals, were done at home.

We are very honoured to have some wonderful guests appearing on some of the recordings. Indra Menus, from Yogyagkarta, Indonesia, adds electronic to the track Cut Hunter. Indra also appears on the Run Peter Run ep on the track, Buru. Hannah Salmon, guitarist, vocalist and artist from the anarcho-punk group Unsanitary Napkin and Displeasure, adds vocals to the song Catastrophic Engine. And finally Adam Tomàšek, from the legendary Czech group Už Jsme Doma adds trumpet to Catastrophic Engine.

In 2019, whilst on tour, we made friends with Stephen Cole from What Studio, and the band a.P.A.t.T, in Liverpool. We liked him so much we employed his services for mixing and mastering duties, and what a fine and grunty job he has made of it all!

And there it is. We feel this is our finest recorded effort to date.

And on that note we therefore offer the following release Goodbye as the proverbial apostrophe. For this is the end, of this. This is the last offering from the band mr sterile Assembly, this is our full-stop.

Goodbye is a collection of random recording, unreleased items, demos, sonic oddities that have remained with us over the years, since almost the beginning, that find a home in this collage of the Assembly’s adventures.

To make Goodbye, we buddied up with the wonderful Dubbed Tapes from Pātea. Each cassette is hand-recorded onto and over a pre-existing cassette, ala recycling and rehabilitating the old format. It is gorgeous (thank you Indira Neville for the glowy photo) and there’s not many of them. Goodbye will be available from both our bandcamp AND Dubbed Tapes – but we encourage you to check Dubbed Tapes out first, explore the other amazing releases they have and support independent and adventurous music!!

Leaving on a high note is a wonderful thing to aim for. The release of both HELLo and Goodbye is our high note.

Way back when we started it would have seemed unfathomable that we would go on to do the things we have had the immense luck to pull off. For Chrissie and I, it has been nothing short of incredible.

There is a huge list of people to thank for the years of connection, collaboration and inspiration.

Firstly we shout out all those who have signed on as band members over the years; Aaron Lloydd , Cara Conroy-Lau, Chris O’Connor, Dan Beban, Dave Mike, Elisa Kersley, Francesca Mountfort, Jana Te Nahu Owen, Jeff Henderson, Miles Climo, Sarsha Douglas and Vlada Plačkić. Alongside this list of luminaries are those that were involved in one-off music projects, text exchanges, shows, exhibitions, tours, videos, recording, documenting and costume making. Thank you.

Next are the many, many people we’ve had the privilege of meeting in so many capacities and in so many countries. We have been lucky to witness and take part in a diverse range of local projects of creativity and social action, of attempts at making a world better and in projects of connection and hopefulness. Thank you.

We thank our kids who have all grown up alongside the sonic onslaught as this juggernaut has shuddered on. many thanks and love.

And we thank YOU for being interested in this project. And we hope that you may stick around and see what comes next. We both are enthusiastic on where our new musical projects are going, and we are able to see similarities in the past and the whats-next, maybe not so much in sound but in process and intention [and maybe later volume].

There will be ONE last show in the new year in Wellington only – stay tuned.

HELLo ALBUM Update and taster

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Really very excited to share this teaser from the up-and-coming new album HELLo . … we are in the final stages of mastering, everything else is ready for the factory

But this also seems like a good song for this time:

The east and west were never really split
The wind calls myth to that
In fearful times, binary lines, erected tall to hold you back
There’s telling in the yelling
Slander in a name
So what if you already lost it all
What matters most, whose skin is in the game
We call this the History of the Wall
Sold a lie, there just two side
For who then do the walls toll
The protocol of Us and Them
If you have to ask you’ll never know
Hope to hope, and see and what will be
Hold a rope and hope for open borders
At one end are the things that you flee
The other spanning danger, deeper water
Face to face with an aggressive gate
A gate is just a door into a Pen
The pen it’s said more savage than the sword
The keeper of the gate is not a friend
A friendly someone who’s holding open space
Space is any place you can belong