My first listening experience with this album was a moving one indeed.

Hiram, one of my favorite artists that can blend the pastoral with the cosmic, used data-sonification technology to generate the sounds on this record. As the title would suggest, all of the sounds you hear on Yucca Music came straight from a yucca plant. Hiram attached sensitive electrodes to the plant’s leaves to pick up its small electrical variations, which were then processed and complemented in real time through MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface).
From there, Hiram used stereo signal processing, an analog synthesizer, reverb/delay effect processor and two track recording equipment to manipulate and record the plant’s musically translated electrical signals.

Meanwhile, here in New Jersey, after a month of grey skies, snow and cold rain, sunlight started to finally shine through the clouds and you could see spots of green poking up through the leaf litter and bare trees outside. As I listened to the soft waves and ringing pulses from these amplified yuccas, it truly felt as though you could sense the earth beneath you and around you wake with life. The air in the room buzzed with it.

Side A sweeps you away with deep currents of electronic drones and twinkling stars of synthesized sounds. Meanwhile Side B, “The Great Unseen,” is a free flowing seascape of churning and oscillating woodwind-like tones that immediately make you think of wind rustling through a leafy forest or a reedy stream bank. Despite the technology that was utilized to assemble the sounds that you’re hearing, the music on this tape still feels organic and elemental in origin. This is especially true with this epic 17+ minute track.

When this tape arrives at your door, be sure to play it when you can be surrounded by sunlight and the greenery of whatever flora you might have on hand, and you’ll feel very in tune with the vibrations of life. Give it a try.

-KH