The future sits on the edge of Now, and in the blink of an eye slides to a place called the Past. It is ever-present, ambiguous, haunted by terrifying possibilities and incredible potentialities.
These pictures, by Kieran Monaghan of vegetable.machine.animal, mr sterile Assembly, and skirted Records, are an unintentional outcome from a residency at Driving Creek Railway in the Coromandel, 2023. In between recording, sound-searching and experimentation, tiny vague words, missing punctuation and clarity of meaning, intentionally mis-readable, and multi-interpretable, appeared. Three or four word phrases that, sometimes, reference the connection species have to the world, and that includes us, and other times don't.
And somewhere in the simple act of scratching a phrase onto paper, abstractions appear and offer place for unexpected color, unintended form and unplanned results.
Kieran Monaghan (he/him) is predominantly, and persistently, a drummer and percussionist of found sounds. He calls Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington home. His first crude musical steps were in the late 1980s, playing drums in southern punk rock bands. Heading north in the 1990s opened new musical domains such as theatre with Red Mole, and its little sister Roadworks, and the diverse arrangements of free jazz that tumbled from venues such as The Space. While continuing to play assertive music, alongside developing confidence in improvisational arenas, necessity also dictated that income be made by playing multiple pub circuits in working bands.
His project, vegetable.machine.animal (VMA), is the newest iteration of ongoing musical expression. It explores the intersections between spontaneous playing, electronic music, and science-informed inter-species collaboration.
Kieran co-runs the skirted Records label with domestic and performative partner Chrissie Butler. Together they were the core of the outsider punk group mr sterile Assembly, and Nick Bollinger named them as one of the ten great rhythm sections of New Zealand. Monaghan has toured internationally many times with the Assembly, and more recently with VMA. He has a long catalogue of solo, band, and collaborative recordings. He is a semi-regular DJ on RadioActive.FM. He is the 2024 Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence. He remains happily hitched, is a father to three daughters and one mokopuna.
Special thanks to Creative New Zealand for supporting Pyramid Club's programme
