What if your next favourite album was written by a money tree? That’s not a hypothetical anymore. Joyful Noise Recordings has officially signed The Sound Sanctuary — a living plant ensemble made up of a towering Pachira aquatica and four Ficus elastica rubber trees — and the debut release is already here, a full-on collaboration with Indianapolis indie legends Deerhoof.
The record is called ‘Deerhoof & The Sound Sanctuary’, and yes, the plants are credited. More on that in a sec.
So How Does a Plant Actually Make Music?
Electrodes attached to the leaves pick up tiny shifts in electrical conductivity caused by water moving through photosynthesis. That biological data gets translated into MIDI, giving the plants a literal musical voice. Human collaborators then shape the sound through filters and synths — but the notes and tempo? That’s all flora. It’s less “man plays nature sounds” and more genuine interspecies improv session.
Deerhoof Let the Plants Cook
Drummer Greg Saunier brought the full Deerhoof energy — loud, intense, unrelenting — and the plants matched it. The result grew surprisingly percussive and rhythmically dense, as if the Sound Sanctuary was vibing off the physical force in the room. The two-track release clocks in at 11:11 per side (yes, both sides), with Plants Prosper! on the A-side and Plants! Make Noise! Here We Are. on the B.
The Bigger Picture (and It’s a Good One)
Joyful Noise founder Karl Hofstetter is pretty upfront about what this project is pushing back against: the rising tide of AI-generated music and artificial streaming artists engineered to siphon revenue away from real musicians. The Sound Sanctuary is framed explicitly as the “opposite of AI” — organic, alive, unpredictable, and rooted (literally) in the natural world.
The series will roll out seasonally across 2026, with Kishi Bashi coming in summer, JD Pinkus (Butthole Surfers / Melvins) in fall, and Yoni Wolf (WHY?) closing it out in winter. Each album drops on digital and 10″ vinyl, with a 4x 10″ LP boxset for the collectors among us. The Sound Sanctuary lives inside the Church of Noise, JNR’s nonprofit home base in Indianapolis, housed in a handbuilt structure crafted by Thor Harris of Swans using salvaged materials — including a 1940s Presto record lathe casing. Because of course it is.
Whether you’re a believer in plant consciousness or a die-hard skeptic, this one’s hard to ignore. Go listen. The trees have something to say.
Listen: ‘Deerhoof & The Sound Sanctuary’ is out now on Joyful Noise Recordings.
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