I'm fascinated by the idea of 'environmental music' - using environmental elements to choose or sculpt generative music. All of of these tracks were made using various plants as a source of bioelectricity - with small changes in this property being converted into note changes in a variety of synthesizers. Depending on the time of day, I then quantized the resulting notes into the scale of an appropriate Indian Raga. My training is in Indian Classical music, and I find it satisfying to use that structure to hold these compositions. It makes them even more 'contextual' in some way.

This is not science, this is art. I think of these pieces as sketches of some of the plants in my environment. All tracks were recorded live, in nature, in the northern Gulf Islands of British Columbia.

fairy creek alder in the evening (raag kafi)

Live From RCA Studio A

Love Love Love (Acoustic)

01 The Mistral Noir

The Sirin Choir - The Beatitudes By Vladimir Martynov Choir

If you want to see how I use the looping pedal, watch the video: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nDMNP1iYxc

'Dawn' is the first piece of music from a film by Meredith Monk: 'Book of Days'. It is originally written for vocal ensemble. But with some adjustments I am able to perform the music on my own, with the Boss RC-300 for looping. I use TC-Helicon VoiceLlive 2 for reverb and vocal doubling.

Dawn - Meredith Monk (cover with live looping vocals)

The Luminous Descent is a cosmic oratorio chronicling the fall, transformation, and rebirth of a star-soul. It begins high in the trembling architecture of heaven and plummets through ruptured light into the depths of a crater older than memory. Across twelve movements and a final ascending coda, the piece follows a sacred cycle: collapse, revelation, purification, and return.

The journey opens with the catastrophe of The Orbit Breaks, where ancient equilibrium fails and gravity claims the star. Through the Rupture drags the listener through the torn mantle of the cosmos, into a corridor of pressure where sound bends like molten metal. In Where the Veil Cools to Glass, the descent slows long enough for the star-soul to touch the dimming membrane between realms, condensing its radiance into crystalline form. Halo of Dark and Light reveals a suspended equilibrium—half illumination, half shadow—preparing the soul for what waits below.

With Canticle from the Hollow Sky, faint hymns echo from unreachable altitudes, fading as the soul sinks further. Pressure Cathedral marks the entry into the core-chamber where cosmic weight becomes sacred architecture, every chord a stone column forged from collapse. The Starbone Reliquary uncovers what remains when brilliance calcifies: relics of ancient light preserved in the dark.

Touching the Crater Floor brings the soul to stillness, where impact becomes silence and silence becomes revelation. The Silence That Remembers Fire awakens memory—a distant echo of the star’s earliest light. As the soul ascends toward Shoreline of the Last Radiance, its form becomes diffuse, rejoining the luminous boundary between ruin and renewal.

The final movement, The Luminous Return, reclaims the upward path. The star-soul rises through the strata of its own unraveling, transformed not back to what it was, but into what it must become.

Then comes the coda.

Ember Throne Ascension erupts like a final breath of defiance—a molten electric guitar solo over a cathedral of cosmic sound. It is the spark that refuses extinction, the last ember erupting into brilliance before dissolving into the quiet beyond creation. The oratorio ends uplifted, electrified, ascending: not a fall, but a coronation in fire.

Touching the Crater Floor

Sufjan Stevens - Concerning The Ufo Sighting Near Highland Illinois (Cover)

Leaving Los Feliz - Mark Ronson ft. Kevin Parker (Slowed)

performance, composition, arrangement, production, live looping | piano, voice, bass guitar, theremin 

Most edits are available on Bandcamp: http://laurastavinoha.bandcamp.com/

Dawn - Meredith Monk (cover with live looping vocals)

Laura Stavinoha

Related tracks