Friday 14 August, 2026, is launch day for the new vegetable.machine.animal album TRIO.

TRIO is a joint release between AFR (Audio Foundation Records) , and our own skirted Records.
It’s been quite a journey to finally get to this point. I’ve written about it in a bit more detail HERE.

To celebrate this musical coming-of-age, a show is being hosted at the wonderful Pyramid Club, in Pōneke. We also have joining the event UMU, and Silicon Tongue.
Tickets at UTR – Pre-sales: $15 entry/$35 entry + CD ::
At the door – entry $20 ($10 low-waged) :: $40 -entry + CD.
TICKET LINK

Press Release:
AFR and Skirted Records are pleased to co-release a new album by vegetable.machine.animal – the moniker of the prolific artist, drummer, collaborator, traveller Kieran Monaghan who is based in Wellington, New Zealand.

v.m.a’s 2025 album ‘Guest’ saw Monaghan and his vegetation/synth/drums setup improvising with 15 different artists over 13 tracks, with diverse instrumentation inclusive of Taonga Puoro (traditional Maori instruments), noise guitars, modular synths, vocals, household objects and more. ‘Trio’ flips this model and sees Monaghan performing alone with his triple pronged ‘band’. Some may argue this is a solo project – Monaghan would beg to differ. The vegetable and the machine cannot be wholly controlled by the animal, and contribute what they will. Given that the sensors on whatever vegetation is at hand pick up the electrical impulses of the alive plant, the animal can only attempt to coax more interactivity by the cute if clumsy gesture of spraying water on said plant, and then it still may not respond…the animal is at the mercy of the inner workings/life of the plant for any material with which to work and create music. The machine interface – a modular synthesizer – responds better to manipulations by the animal, however the taming of electricity into predictable forms is not desired – the opposite is what makes the sound/music alive. Surprise, instability, chance, error, repetition, ruts…it all makes for a wonderful sound world for the animal to spontaneously interact with, thus this is very much a Trio. Whilst scientific tests on the effect of music upon plants remain inconclusive, whether or not the vegetable and machine are ‘listening’ or responding to the animal is irrelevant – the animal is at the mercy of the vegetable, the machine talks to both, we the listeners simply listen.

– AFR

releases August 14, 2026

Thank you to CNZ for the support to make this possible.