How Auntie Flo’s ‘Plants Can Dance’ compilation celebrates a new species of producersDJ and producer Brian D’Souza, also known as Auntie Flo, is behind a new compilation, Plants Can Dance, pulling together a number of music-makers with a shared vision: to use nature as a collaborative partner for their music.
Plants Can Dance by A State Of Flo
“I have a newfound respect for the natural world and hope this work inspires others to feel the same,” D’Souza says, who has showcased his own plant-based sonic experiments at British institutions such as the Tate and V&A.
“80 percent of us now live in cities and are mostly surrounded by concrete. I see this work as literally breaking through those concrete layers, uncovering a world that was previously hidden. By using sound as the point of entry, I’ve been able to re-tune my entire perspective on the living ecosystem that is all around us.”

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The processes behind each electronic piece differ, from interpreting plant biodata into sound to translating wind patterns into compositions — with varied and engaging results. Modern Biology, Dr Helen Anahita Wilson, OMMA (founder of Playtronica) and Jason Singh are among the compilation’s cast.
“Through biosonification I can interpret the world of other living entities and share this with people in ways that traditional music making or performing hasn’t allowed,” says Jason, whose track Tsubaki features.
“By mimicking the natural world through my voice, I feel a deeper connection with both my internal and external environment. The more I explore, the more I find out that I know very little about nature and that there is so much to learn.”
Brian D’Souza. Image: Press
Plant experiments
If you’ve headed down to the Hideout venue in Hackney Wick of late, then you might have come across D’Souza and his fellow explorers at his Plants Can Dance events. It’s not the usual kind of music night – there’s arguably as much soil as there are synthesisers and modular equipment alongside discussion and workshops with everyone encouraged to contribute. The concept behind Plants can Dance initially stemmed from a commission D’Souza received for a project called ‘Dandelion’ at the UK’s Unboxed festival in 2021.
“The project was all about vertical farming and they positioned these boxes they called Cubes Of Perpetual Light around remote locations around Scotland, with a surround sound set up inside that you could immerse yourself in if you encountered them,” says D’Souza. “I made my piece using MIDI captures of herbs around my garden – sage, basil and rosemary using a PlantWave device and put together a piece.”
Field recording was initially D’Souza’s way into working with plants, a practice he has always undertaken via his phone. He was encouraged to amplify this part of his work via a course with Cabaret Voltaire’s field recording expert, Chris Watson.
“I spent thousands of pounds on a variety of mics and that got me deeper down the path of trying to capture the natural world through sound,” D’Souza explains. I then went on a week-long CAMP.Fr course on Ecoacoustics, which provided more inspiration and direction when it came to the purpose of using sound as a means of connecting with nature.”
“The simple act of listening deeply and intently was a revelation to me – and this heightened ability for attentive listening was made possible through the field recording techniques I’d learned.”
Helen Anahita Wilson. Image: Press
Helen Anahita Wilson’s work is strictly in biophilic composition as opposed to biosonification, which involves capturing MIDI from organisms. Instead, her approach is to translate plant processes, then embed this data within her compositions to create music that tunes into an organism’s character.
“My way into this kind of plant-derived work – which I call biophilic music – was through working with medicinal plants and wanting to raise awareness of the natural derivation of certain pharmaceutical drugs,” Helen states. “I was, and still am, very interested in creating plant-derived biophilic music for healthcare settings.”
“My projects under the name PLANT VOX are also examples of using herbs and medicinal plants to create music which aims to create the same effect on the listener as if they had ingested those plants, i.e. listening to a piece of music that helps you get to sleep, made from plants that also have that same soporific quality.”
OMMA. Image: Press
Plants Can Dance
D’Souza’s interest in working with plants was accelerated by the COVID lockdown and solidified over several artistic commissions: Mushroom Music for the mycelium pavilion at Glastonbury and sonifying a show garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. Although he believed these nature-based projects would be one-offs, conversations and experiments continued to expand.
“Through my various projects, I started to meet musicians around the world who are on a similar journey to me – all with their own unique story to tell,” he says. “So the compilation is a way of bringing all these approaches together under one roof, which will hopefully inspire more to get into nature-inspired music. The lesson is, once you start putting yourself out there, you end up meeting other likeminded souls and that helps you grow a community, both locally and online.”
Jason Singh got on board through a mutual connection with D’Souza. With roots in the Punjab in North India, his great-grandmother was a Hakim, a plant-wisdom holder and healer who worked with plants from the forest to help people.
“Indian music is an ancient system where melody and rhythm is directly derived through nature via the seasons, time of day, colours, animals, insects and the planets,” he says. “I have been raised with this so the relationship has always been there, not as something experimental or academic but direct and experiential. I was raised on Indian ragas through Indian classical and folk music, and this flowed through me from an early age.”
Jason Singh. Image: Press
Initially, Jason started using specialist microphones and was influenced by the electronic music of artists like Mileece, Eberhard Schoener and Charles Dodge. As technology became cheaper and more open source, he purchased a MIDI Sprout device – this enabled him to connect plants to his hardware and powered his piece, Tsubaki.
“This is the Japanese word for Camellia, and was originally part of a long-form piece I created for an eight speaker sound installation at The Camellia House in Woolaton Park in Nottingham,” he states.
“People come from all over the world to see the Camellia bloom in late winter/early spring and I wanted to create a sound installation where not only could people experience the visual aesthetic of the flowers but also affect the mood and emotion of the space through the hidden music created by the plants themselves.”
“There was also a plant music concert where musicians played live with the Camellia. I reworked a section of the piece and my dear friend, cellist Liz Hanks, played a really emotional composition to accompany the Camellias composition.”
Jason used a MIDI Sprout device to capture the plant data, then played the MIDI files via Ableton.
“I did this through a range of pads, effects and bespoke plugins designed by Leafcutter John,” he states. “I also used Arturia’s Pigment synth as I really like the pad sounds in that software synth.”

Helen’s approach is aimed at expressing the characteristics of the organisms rather than compiling an archive of plant recordings.
“I like to work with bioelectricity monitors, conductivity monitors such as PlantWave and the Pocket Scion, real audio recordings, and with botanical analyses and genetic data to record and find interesting little patterns which seem musical to me in some way,” she says.
“Once I spot something promising in the plant biodata that I can translate into rhythms and pitches, then I develop that fragment using techniques from Western and South Asian musics that can convey characteristics and behaviours of the plants involved,” Helen continues. “I always use Ableton for this kind of work. In Porcupine and the Outdoor Girls [her contribution to Plants Can Dance] I used data recordings and botanical information from the toxic Porcupine tomato and the edible Outdoor Girl tomato as the original source material for the composition.”
D’Souza track Hector’s Sunflower opens the compilation and was inspired by his son and the sunflower seeds he was gifted at school.
“It was fun to watch them flower and the sunflowers to grow over the course of last summer,” he explains. “I originally took some MIDI readings throughout various stages in its lifecycle but ended up not using them and instead recording a whole album in a day, which came out on Music To Watch Seeds Grow By in January.”
While the Plants Can Dance compilation is now released, D’Souza is keen for it to signpost the possibilities for anyone to work with plants.

“The idea is to make things as accessible as possible to help others feel inspired, most of the tech is open source and with a bit of time and knowledge can be adapted and built upon,” he says. “The scientific research is still very young and plenty of things we are yet to discover in terms of the deeper themes around plant sentience or even intelligence.”
Alongside the album, D’Souza is planning on launching a new app – Soniferous – while also updating his modular setup and gear.
“I’m a purist in terms of not running any kind of clock and not adding any human playing into my compositions. My role is to set up the patching ecosystem and then let the plant or organism do the work. The more performances I do, the less I do. My role is sometimes just to occasionally water the plants and hear how that sounds. I find audiences tend to appreciate that more.”
Find out more about Plants Can Dance at A State Of Flo | Brian d’Souza | Substack
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