Hyphae by Lapis Elle

About the concept:

On Hyphae, Lapis Elle invites the listener into a sonic ecosystem built from complexity itself. Sculpted entirely on modular synthesizers, these compositions grow from self-sustaining feedback patches – circuits where voltage flows in recursive loops, constantly reshaping itself in response to tiny variations. The result is a music that behaves less like a sequence and more like a living system: unpredictable, adaptive, and deeply interwoven.
The conceptual roots lie in the wood wide web – the vast mycorrhizal networks that connect trees, shrubs, and wildflowers through the hyphal threads of fungi. These underground pathways distribute water, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus between species, sustaining the forest as a unified organism. Among the countless agents at work are Fomes fomentarius (Tinder Conk), a bracket fungus that decomposes fallen wood and recycles nutrients into the soil, and Glomus intraradices (Intraradices Mycorrhizal Fungus), which transfers vital minerals to plants across remarkable distances.

Just as mycorrhizal networks rely on countless micro-interactions to sustain biodiversity, Mycorrhizal Fields thrives on the emergent patterns born from interconnected feedback loops. Each sound is both signal and nutrient: an element in a closed, ever-adapting system. But when biodiversity falters – when the web of life frays – the system loses its stability. In Elle’s sound worlds, this collapse emerges as feedback unraveling into silence, a stark reminder of the delicate balance upon which resilience depends.


About the composition:

This piece was composed entirely on a single panel of a Serge Modular synthesizer. It uses complex feedback paths like those associated with artists like David Tudor and uses them to create environments that resemble field recordings from another world. Here, they are used to bring attention to the webs of networks that connect living organisms in a forest, using the same methodology from nature in the synthesizer patches. the majority of the patches rely on feedbacked wavefolders, waveshapers, and equalizers to create artificial nature sounds that are subtly changed and adapted by envelopes in other feedback loops, or hand modulated in improvisations. The album is bookended by two more recent compositions that try to bridge my acoustic work in extened just intonation with this feedback work.

About the artist:

Lapis Elle is the artist name for composer and sound artist Samuel Long. He is a Boston and New York City-based composer and improviser whose work focuses on the scientific properties of sound. He has written acoustic music in extended just intonation for ensembles including the Lydian String Quartet, Talea, Hypercube, and Lamnth, and has performed electronic music at IRCAM and the Darmstadt Summer Courses.

re:natura is a non-profit artist collective, music label and experimental laboratory with a clear, shared vision.

With a focus on topics of biodiversity, we explore animals, plants, landscapes and natural phenomena. In the critical tradition of naturalists, we compose, publish, perform and convey experimental musics that are concerned with the specifics of life.

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label.re.natura@gmail.com

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