vegetable.machine.animal Announce Aotearoa Tour

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 15-date tour runs from Whanganui to Invercargill, taking in main centres and
out-of-the-way venues alike.

TRIO is billed as the “interspecies trio” – a collection of music grown from the interaction of drums, modular synthesis, and plant-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.

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.

vegetable.machine.animal Tour Dates

27 September @ Te Whare o Rehua / Sarjeant, Whanganui – talk – performance
2 October @ Blue House, Patea
3 October @ Audio Foundation, Auckland
7 October @ Mount Tavern, Tauranga
8 October @ Snails, Palmerston North 
9 October @ Giant Warehouse, Havelock North
10 October @ The Bakehouse, Featherston
13 November @ Blenheim
14 November @ Waa! Club, Nelson
15 November @ Gloria of Greymouth, Greymouth
20 November @ Dunedin 
21 November @ Threes & Sevens Records, Invercargill
26 November @ House Party, Port Chalmers
27 November @ Ashburton Art Gallery, Ashburton
28 November @ Lyttelton Coffee Cafe, Lyttelton