By nature, experimental music is defined by singular, radical thinking. It is a push, joining ideas and sound, toward the unknown and unheard. Yet, setting the ambitions of this remarkable creative context aside, it remains rare to encounter objects which veer so far from the beaten path that they feel like their own quiet revolution of one - challenging the very conceptions of music, as the architects of the avant-garde once did. This, in the simplest terms, is what Plein Air / Silva Datum Musica, the culmination of a ten year project by Tim Collins, Reiko Goto, and Chris Malcolm, has seemingly managed to do. Issued by their German imprint Gruenrekorder - an extension of their long standing dedication to musical and sound-art efforts built from field recordings, it is a stunningly beautiful and radical rethinking of the base notions of organized sound.

Encountering three artists joining forces, driven into new realms by interfaces with technology and chance, Plein Air / Silva Datum Musica is one of those rare LPs which can instill even the most weathered experimental music fan with faith. There is still ground to be broken and adventures to be had. Created with a custom built, plant-driven synthesizer which uses scientific sensors and software programming to generate real-time tree leaf data. Light, photosynthesis and transpiration modify sound, giving way to electronic rhythm, melody, texture, and harmonic shifts, directly linked to atmospheric conditions and a tree's response.

Rich and challenging for its raw sounds and ideas alone, Collins, Goto and Malcolm's Plein Air / Silva Datum Musica is made that much more compelling by the perceptible absence of ego via its creators' hands - an engrossing work of unadulterated, abstract sound - at once calling to mind the efforts of the mid-20th century orchestra and synthesis based avant-gardes, while delving toward the future entirely on its own.