Kieran Monaghan – 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 80’s, playing drums in southern punk rock bands. Heading north in the 90’s opened new musical domains such as theatre with Red Mole, and it’s little sister Roadworks, and the diverse arrangements of ‘free-jazz’ that tumbled from venues such as The Space.
He 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 10 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.
Vegetable.Machine.Animal
His most recent project, Vegetable. Machine. Animal (VMA) is the latest iteration of ongoing musical expression. It explores the intersections between spontaneous playing, electronic music, and science-informed inter-species collaboration. A recent installation, ‘Mundane Utopia,’ at the Audio Foundation, is one interaction of this research.
Kieran was introduced to AwhiWorld via an introduction by Mark Williams of our partner organisation Circuit Artist Moving Image
In this video, Kieran and Maggie meet for the first time and discuss his practice and explore areas of commonality.
This interview is relevant to the bioSignals project and also the Strange Intelligences Lab.
Video production and editing by Jarred Taylor
Additional Related Content
“Here a link to some audio of mine [mrsterileassembly and vegetable.machine.animal] on Bandcamp “
” Our YouTube has a bunch of plant related content”
“A link to the Eryk Salvaggio album which kicked off my imagination to get lost in this project – it remains a beautiful listen to my ears”
See also Chris Brady’s work as part of our incubator which has strong links with Kieran’s latest installation.
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This interview is part of the BioSignals project funded by the British Council through their #ConnectionsThroughCulture fund.
It also intersects and informs the Strange Intelligences Lab
