vegetable.machine.animal (vma) will tour Aotearoa New Zealand from 27 September to 28 November 2026 in support of TRIO, the project’s new album, co-released by Audio Foundation Records and skirted Records. The 20-event tour runs from Whanganui to Invercargill, taking in main centres and out-of-the-way venues alike.
This show also features the wonderful DSLB, and local acts POLTROON
TRIO is billed as the “interspecies trio” — a collection of music grown from the interaction of drums, modular synthesis, and plant/fungi-triggered biosignals. It stands as a companion to vma’s 2025 release, GUEST, which invited a rotating cast of collaborators — including Ruby Solly, David Long, and Mo H. Zareei — to add their voices to the project’s living sonic ecology.
Where GUEST opened the circle outward, TRIO pulls the focus back to the project’s original three-way interaction between human, machine, and organism, completing the pair of bookends vma first envisioned for its 2024 Sonic Artist Residency. A cherry log, gifted to the project during its 2025 Aotearoa tour and now fruiting with mushrooms, generates the voltage that drives the synthesiser, translating fungal and plant activity directly into sound alongside live drumming and electronics. The result is a polyphonic, unpredictable soundworld exploring what a “more-than-human” music might sound like.
The album was recorded in January 2026 inside a repurposed wooden Salvation Army hall in Island Bay, Wellington, and mastered in time for a successful 19-date Australian tour. vma now brings the completed work home for this Aotearoa run.
Live, vma continues to deliver dynamic and unpredictable performances, working in real time with the musical ecology of human and more-than-human interaction — drums, electronics, percussive clatter, and plant-triggered samples combining into a soundworld that is as perplexing as it is entertaining.
About TRIO
TRIO was released 14 August 2026 through skirted Records and Audio Foundation Records. More information and the album stream are available at AFR [Audio Foundation Records] & skirtedrecords.com.
The companion album: GUEST
TRIO is best understood alongside vma’s 2025 debut, GUEST, released 30 May 2025 on the same two labels. Led by drummer Kieran Monaghan(ex-mr sterile Assembly) GUEST invited thirteen collaborators — among them Ruby Solly, David Long, Mo H. Zareei, and Chrissie Butler — into the project’s open, intuitive sessions, each following rather than guiding the music already in motion. Together, GUEST and TRIO form the two bookends of vma’s first full cycle: one outward-facing and collaborative, the other returning to the founding three-way exchange between human, machine, and organism. GUEST is available at AFR [Audio Foundation Records] , & skirted Records Bandcamp.
About vegetable.machine.animal
vegetable.machine.animal (vma) is a sonic ecology project exploring interspecies collaboration between human performers, electronic instruments, and living organisms. The project has toured Aotearoa, Australia, Taiwan, and Indonesia, and has held various artist residencies including the Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence.
About DSLB
DSLB is Chrissie Butler’s solo sound project. Beginning with the low-fi songwriting of BlokeBird in 2013, the project has evolved to encompass improvised performance, experimental film scores, and site-responsive instrumental works grounded in people and place.
In both solo and collaborative performances, Chrissie creates improvised works using analogue electronics, acoustic instruments, voice, field recordings, and found materials. Rather than following fixed compositions, each performance develops through listening, experimentation, and responding to the people, sounds, and environment in the moment.
Chrissie was a foundational member, and bass player, for the longest time in the assertive rock duo mr sterile Assembly.
