625 Moons (September 2025)
From Scratch

Throughout September 2024, From Scratch celebrated 50 years of musical activism and experimentation by collaborating with improvisers, composers, musicians, and filmmakers for a series of performances produced by the Audio Foundation in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The collaborative spirit of the 625 Moons celebration is encapsulated in a text by Karl Marx from Das Kapital, which Karl Steven drew upon for his piece Co-operation:

When numerous labourers work together side by side,
whether in one and the same process,
or in different but connected processes,
they are said to co-operate,
or to work in co-operation.

From Scratch are Phil Dadson, Adrian Croucher, Shane Currey, Darryn Harkness & Chris O’Connor.

This LP is a set of extracts from selected live performances, curated & produced by Jeff Henderson.
Recorded at The Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa/New Zealand by Sam Longmore & Matthew Gunn.
Edited, mixed & mastered by Jeff Henderson.
Design by Richard Francis.

Produced by Phil Dadson & Jeff Henderson for Audio Foundation Records.

GUEST (May 2025)
vegetable.machine.animal

A live conversation between plants, fungi, machines, and human musicians.

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).

Tūpiki (December 2024)
Riki Pirihi & Abigail Aroha Jensen

Tūpiki was recorded at Audio Foundation during the autumn recording residency in 2023.

The conceptual framework for the album is inspired by the journey Maui took to climb the 12 stairs of heaven, Te Ara Poutama. Each track covers a realm which Maui climbs to retrieve the baskets of knowledge. Each track is dubbed in three, and each track plays out to 3.33.

During its recording, the album was divided into four parts dictated by certain realms of the soul – Puku, Manawa, Korokoro and Ūpoko. These realms anchored a method of playing for both Riki and Abigail, introducing a connecting point in the philosophy of hauora and sound associated with The Four Doors of Oro.
Abigail had been researching this concept through the late Hinewirangi Kohu-Morgan. Riki suggested they integrate the four doors into the 12 steps. Matt the sound wizard set up our booth, they recorded and layered each track in threes and thus, Tūpiki was born.

Each track is a musical interpretation within a realm, behind a door and in an upward motion. Tūpiki captures a moment in time where three people meet to climb the heavenly realms together.

Tūpiki.
Tūpiki ake ki te wāhi ngaro. Tūpiki ake ki te rangi tūhāhā. Tūpiki ake ki Mātangireia.
Tū te winiwini, tū te wanawana.
Tū pīki, tū meke, tū much.
Karanga te pō, karanga te ao.
Koropupū te repo.
Tamumu te rau.
Wawara te ngārara.
Tioriori te kāhui manu.
He tipua, he taniwha. He aituā, he atua.
Karanga mai, tangi mai, mihi mai rā.
Tūmuckenfuch
– Mokotron

I know……a…way…(July 2024)
Ducklingmonster

‘I know….a….way’ is the first solo LP by Ducklingmonster aka Beth Dawson. Created during her 2023 Winter Residency at Tāmaki Makaurau’s Audio Foundation, ‘I know….a….way’ weaves a disembodied playfulness – building its own environments through the materiality of creation.

Utilising a combination of scratched 45 records, broken beats emanating from a JVC boombox, field recordings of crashing oceans and Karangahape footpaths, electronic and vocal textures laid into walls of sonics – ‘I know….a….way’ revels in the forgotten, neglected and overlooked. This collage of damaged sounds shines a light on lost passages of real time and space.

Ducklingmonster/Beth Dawson is a leading figure in the vibrant experimental arts scene in Aotearoa. Her work crosses many media, cities, and decades, and has made an indelible impression on the sound and shape of Aotearoa’s experimental music history.