Category Archives: Touring

Finished with Perfect Timing

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A resident from Hobart

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.

Newcastle to Canberra

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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.

— — —

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.

— — —

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.

— — —

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.

— — —

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.

— — —

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.

Melbourne at dawn

Sleeping with Snakes

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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.

———

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

vegetable.machine.animal Australian Tour, 2026

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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 TBA
Saturday 13 – muwinina Land / Hobart – – MONA
Monday 15 – Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land / Melboure – – Morbid Monday’s at The Old Bar – line-up TBA
Thursday 18 – Millowl / Cowes – – Bar 151 – w/MNNQNPNTS’D, Ruinscapes, & JC
Friday 19 – Dja Dja Wurrung Land / Bendigo – – Trashcult – line-up TBA
Saturday 20 – Dja Dja Wurrung Land / Castlemaine – – Oni Streetwear – line-up TBA
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 – – live to air on the radio, w/Furchick
Monday 29 – Walyalup / Fremantle – – Fremantle Buffalo Club, – line-up TBA
Tueday 30 – Whadjuk Nyoogar Land / Perth – – Noizemachin!! – line-up TBA

vma will be touring with 2 new albums, available online, and from the shows – Electrical Minzu 35, & TRIO

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.

A tour is toured!

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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.

Cafe Jiang Shan Yi Gai Suo in Hsinchu

We had the chance to play a range of venues: livehouses like Revolver in Taipei, cafe’s like Night Cruising in Hualien, Catmeoworm in Taichung, Jiang Shan Yi Gai Suo in Hsinchu, and gallery spaces like Fotoaura and Ting Shuo Hear Say in Tainan. 

And it’s been a real treat to see, and hear, the many acts that we shared shows with. The follow list here is order of performance – check them out:
Kina:suttsu x E-Da (Japan), Colour Domes 彩色穹頂 , Your Futagono Tamashi & 林子寧 Lin Tzu-Ning, Christoven (Singapore) & Pablo Liebhaber (Germany), Fang Yi Liu & Cia Himâin Li, Jonáš Gruska (Slovenia), Stefan Voglsinger (Austria), Nick Tsai, Lai Shi Chao & Xiao Liu, DJ Rex Chen, Jun-Yang Li, Alexis Baskind (France/Germany), Reuban Zahl, Tanehiko Sekijima & Kentaro Tamura (Japan), Chang Deng-Yao, Kaiyu Lin, Huang Ching Yi, Franki Wals, and Zihning Tai 戴孜嬣.

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

Managing being Fixed

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We leave early in the morning. We came Hualien to play a show at a cute cafe called Night Cruising, at an event called 電路萬段 Electric Road. We met wonderful people and felt welcomed by their enthusiasm.

From the train window, evidence is still visible from Typhoon Ragasa’s recent visit: A super-typhoon that slammed into the Taiwanese east coast, Hualien County, only weeks ago, in September.

There are tears on the hills from slips, some of the scars are massive. Roads built on the side of river banks are broken at right angles, as the force of the wash undermined any idea of structural integrity. There’s also human-made assemblages of rocks, boulders, and concrete structures waiting in place to be used to repair some of the damage.  There’s also spontaneous hillsides of elephant-sized stones washed down from torrents, thrown violently as if weightless to the might of water.

The riverbeds are occupied by machinery. Diggers and graders assemble to remove and distribute the debris. They look like tiny toys in these causeways of dry braided rivers. But Typhoon Fung-Wong is on the way, and it will blow the dry away.

The news yesterday says the super-typhoon has just left the Philippines, with nearly one million forced to evacuate, and a shit-tonne of damage left in its wake. It is the 25th typhoon in 2025 to impact the Philippines.

Typhoon Fung-Wong in the Phillipines

Hualien County is on high alert from incoming Fung-Wong. Less than two months ago, Typhoon Ragasa smashed the region, bringing death, injury, and destruction. Entire neighbourhoods were submerged after barrier lakes, naturally formed obstructions (think dam) in the mountains, breeched, sending water, mud, and rock at all that lay in its path.

Ragasa in Hualien, September 2025

We met a teacher/artist in Fenglin in a super-friendly coffee shop. She tells us how her school was devastated by Ragasa. Classrooms clogged by mud, resources ruined and destroyed in the aftermath. The clean-up is ongoing, and nothing is normal. Classes haven’t resumed, but the teacher returns to work to continue with the clean-up. She also shows us some of her artwork, illustrations for a book she is writing to help children manage and express the intense emotions they may be feeling. Her attention to care is evident. And finally, more personally, she shows us a video on her phone, a clip she filmed after they had evacuated upstairs, of the torrential floodwaters surging down the streets past her family home six weeks ago. She points out cars, appliances, and other items that float past in the deluge.

“Don’t Rain Anymore” Shizaodai – thank you for letting us share your art

We also hear the repeatable story of civic mobilisation and mutual support post-disaster. Ordinary people who voluntarily head into damaged zones to help out with cleaning, repairing, and bringing essential skills and compassion for others. Ordinary empathy is an incredible resource, worth more than all the gold and riches.

Video of Ragasa impact in Southern China

This will be my first experience of a typhoon, but here, it is an ongoing and seasonal experience for Taiwan. That said it is now without question that the frequency and intensity of these storms is increasing. The meteorological projection, for this part of the world, is that the ongoing warming ocean will continue to exacerbate the extremity of the storms. And you can’t move an island.

I live on an immovable island at a safe-ish distance for most of these sub-tropical events – for the moment. But change has arrived whether we like it or not. The impacts are with us. Back home in Aotearoa, the recent fires of Tongariro are still smouldering. And the evidence says the fires are more frequent, as are droughts, the winds, and rains. To top this off, we have a government who are acting like a bunch of slap-headed fuckwits in relation to any policy responsibility towards the mitigation from the impacts of a locally, and globally, changing climate. The islands are fixed in place, the change comes to us.

Later:
I’m about to press publish. The typhoon arrives in about 9 hours. Friendly folk we have met over the last few weeks are telling us to be careful. But when we look around the laneways it all seems quite relaxed. There almost nothing I can see that indicates that people are especially worried. The only precaution I spot is that a local joss paper shop has cover his merchandise with a single tarp, and then fixed it to the ground with plastic rope and a brick. But best I don’t get deceived, the locals are experts at living with these storms. We will see what the morning brings.

Naive Skies

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I’ve never seen them. But most mornings. I wake hearing them tear silence from the sky, heaven torn apart by winged chariots dragging wheelless trailers of thunder. Or, when I’m walking, the invisible echos roll down the shiny tiled walls of narrow alleyways, lanes of lives, livelihoods, and plants.

I’ve tried to write about this several times before, three or four times at least, but it felt naive, trite, an observation of a sheltered tourist into the everyday reality of somewhere else. I discard those attempts with distain, and with the decision to wait till some other item of interest appears.

But then I hear jets, I imagine purpose, sabre-rattling, preparedness training, a deterrence-dance or defensive manoeuvres. I come from quiet skies, where fighter jets are rarely seen, and the dominant use of the overhead is for commerce and passengers. These are the naive skies of home.

Yet, the story of the jet never leaves. I cannot shake its’ company. It returns again and again, a persistent interjection that I feel compelled to consider more.

I’m told that these war machines may be in the hands of pilots in training. But we’re not certain. There is a larger airbase northward that interacts on the geopolitical frontlines over the Taiwan Strait, the identity-crisis of contested waters, are they ‘internal’ to China or international? It is a geopolitics that I am painfully aware of being under-informed about.

In a conversation last weekend, we were told about the inconsistency between the local geopolitical realities’ vs the repetitious ‘Western’ media cycle. The sabre-rattle of print, the pundit and the podcast that gets rolled out with clockwork precision to meet some other agenda elsewhere. Not of the people down here in the laneways.

There is half a bottle of water sitting on top of the fridge in the kitchen, a captured millpond of drinking water. The sound-waves of the jets reaches into the insides of the container, we see the sound of the jet ripple the fluids surface. Like a tiny earthquake, but from above. Or not. Later I question this idea, maybe I’m just connecting dots to a story that doesn’t exist. Did I just rock the vessel by closing the fridge door moments ago?

Pattern recognition is when the brain imagines a line between two dots. The line doesn’t exist, but we believe it to be true. This act of recognition is evolutionalily useful in finding familiarity, but not fact. Bias will launch the brain in to all manner of inaccuracies and batshit cul-de-sac’s, media will have us believe all sorts of distractions via approximate associations. My naivety feels exposed. It’s good to spot it in action. The best response is to, first, be quiet and then learn.

My thinking turns to others’ airspaces. Recent scrolling presented videos of the celebration of silence as the Israeli governments, eventually fraudulent, ‘ceasefire’ came into effect. Palestinian skies minus the jets and drones, monstrous machines designed for one task, to deliver earthquake munitions with heartbreak precision. For a moment, the skies of Gaza are silent, songs rise from the earth. Weeks before, videos from within the apocalypse zone, video clips of teachers teaching students to sing in tune with drones. I can not truly comprehend such coexistent bravery and horror.

We recently played a show in a cafe in Taichung. On the walls hang an exhibition of posters of invitation and resistance from Palestine, organised by local DIY, punk, and communities of solidarity. 

Published 1901

The oldest image, from 1901, is a romantic invitation to Cook’s Nile & Palestine Tours. Depicted is a lone human, on top of a dressed camel, beside a river, looking towards the setting sun. On the surface of still water are sail boats and a steamship of leisure. Across the water is a building to house hundreds in restorative comfort. Perhaps the skies are quiet except for dusks birds. An invitation to tourists and visitors alike. As the posters in the exhibition move toward our current time, the imagery becomes more desperate, painful, deadly. Posters are a silent format. But in this point in time, as in many previous, they aim to tear apart the silence, sending, like soundwaves, out into the future, connecting action to meaning.

Free the skies for all!

1985
Circa 1985
1983

DSLB – vegetable.machine.animal residency and tour

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We are hours away from hoping onboard a metal bird to wing our way to the island of Taiwan.

We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to spend two months in Tainan, a southern city in Taiwan, in residence at Ting Shuo Hear Say. We have a bunch of projects to explore and experiment with, and we look forwards to sharing these with you in time as they revel themselves to us.

And for added excitement there’s a bunch of show in the middle of the stay. The 7th is tentative, perhaps we go to Hualien, but they have just been impacted by the typhoon. We shall wait and see. The shows will be a combination of playing together as a duo, as solos, or in collaborations with local musicians.

Post-tour bLOG

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The last repose of Log.

Home again after four weeks on the road. Unpacked, reassembled, and now time for minor maintenance, repairs, and reflection.

It was a first to embark on such an extensive local tour. One that spanned both islands and explored venues from house gigs, chapels, record stores, bars, galleries, and community spaces. There were a bunch of new towns and venues, and a few familiar favourites. This tour also felt like a grand opportunity to get an update on what’s physically happening in other centres, build new, and reconnect with older, networks, and to experience a bunch of active musicians and bands around the motu. 13 shows were booked, two fell through but picked up a improv show in Lyttelton, and a Live-to-Air on Radio One in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, so, luckily, 13 remained. The log offered zero complaints.

Now in this post-tour-state, I am left with my optimism uplifted. There are strong pockets of community interest and activity who seemed to be interested in experiencing fungi-impregnated and log-powered music. Loads of fascinating conversations happen after the shows. I certainly had a brilliant time and feel confident that the many-varying audiences enjoyed the spectacle as well.

Many thanks to: Sam and Glory [especially for the log!], Tonamu and the Kirikiriroa/Hamilton crew, Jeff and AF, Mark and the rest in Heretaunga/Hastings [unfortunately didn’t get to play but seems like a great network and hope to go there soon], Campbell, Sarah, Snails, Porridge Watson, Ben and Hanna, Zac at Common Ground, Matt/George et al in Te Waiharakeke/Blenheim, Matthew Plunkett, Ruben Derrick, Te Atamira, Fi and the crew of Radio One, Mads & Liam of Hōhā, The Crown crew, Jordan/Matt of Murgatroyd and Threes and Sevens Records – Waihōpai/Invercargill. Also, to Radio Control, Ben at IN sessioNZ, Mark Amery at RNZ, and Radio One, for the radio interviews. Extra special thanks to Fergus Nm for the image for the poster. And to all the bands, bedding, and bonding, it was very much appreciated, let’s do it again sometime soon.