Yosa Peit’s LP Phyton is one prong of her multi-disciplinary project based in Berlin. Peit corralled local artists for what she calls an ‘interspecies garden’; an installation incorporating ceramics and even costume, set to become a sound garden in 2021. This, for some, no doubt frames the LP as window-dressing for the project’s more tactile elements—the way techno becomes background noise for fashion shows. Thankfully, Phyton is a colourful, direct and inventive album which stands confidently on its own two feet.
Since long before Bjork’s Biophilia, there’s been a desire among producers to incorporate natural processes into their work; to more closely enmesh machines and biology than before. And that urge still exists. Leland Kirby simulated misfiring neurons for his generative opus Everywhere at the end of time. Venetian Snares’ and Hecate’s Nymphomatriarch is comprised entirely of samples of the two artists performing sex acts on one another. Phyton takes a more conceptual (and less gimmicky) approach by incorporating plant and organic matter into its physical spaces, and an exploration of growth and process in its sonic spaces.
This idea of growth takes many forms. Early in the album we are presented with ‘Serpentine’, a track which unfolds to reveals itself more throughout its duration. The track begins slowly, with the clamour of a forest canopy and sparse synth arpeggiations. But you soon get the sense that it has flowered from these unassuming shoots as it becomes more beat-driven and energetic. ‘Leaf I’ and ‘Leaf II’ feel like the sketches of a lost track—and as their name suggests, they feel like some incomplete piece of a larger structure from which they’ve come unstuck.
Most surprisingly, the conceptual rigor of Phyton coexists with some great pop songwriting. ‘Curls’ and ‘New Stars’ have the warm timbre and catchiness of Paul Simon’s Graceland—but, like a jpeg copied a thousand times, they boast some intricate and almost profane distortions; distortions which are beautiful in their own right. They drag their 1980s pop sensibility into a screaming present which conceptualises science far beyond the remit of what anyone though possible four decades ago.
Phyton feels utopian. It predicts a prosperous and inclusive future, in which we find harmony with nature—and ourselves—through the reconfiguration of our own structures; in which growth and construction are synonymous, and the development of culture enriches the world rather than gutting and burning it piece by piece. The great success of Phyton is to make that future convincing—and to say that everyone is invited, especially you.
Phyton is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe