Femininity and metaphors of motherhood have always determined the perception of nature and environment. With the rise of the ecological movements, they have also accompanied political eco-activism and nature conservation regimes. In this context, ecofeminism emerged as an academic, intellectual and social movement to critically question environmental conflicts and their interrelatedness to gender norms and power constellations. To what extent is ecofeminism a topic of pop music? Showcasing selected pop music examples from Tracy Chapman, Björk, Marina, Anohni and others, this article identifies four major thematic strands of narrating ecofeminist positions through pop music: (1) violence and vulnerability, illustrating the contrast between female nature and male culture; (2) strength and togetherness, focusing on the ontological connection between female bodies and nature; (3) protest and empowerment, drawing an activist demarcation against patriarchy and binary thinking; and (4) transecology and gender-queerness, crossing both heteronormative boundaries of bodies and dualistic nature conceptions.

This article analyses the author’s modular synthesis practice through the lens of Simondonian philosophy, arguing that modular synthesis represents a dynamic example of technical ontogenesis in artistic practice. With its emphasis on technical becoming, Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of technology provides a detailed framework for the analysis of modular synthesis patching. Following a practice-based methodology, the article references two ‘think-aloud’ videos filmed of the author patching on two modular synthesis systems. Tracing the genesis of sound sources throughout each session, aspects of Simondonian technical invention are analysed with respect to this creative practice. As these patches concretise, an increasingly saturated associated milieu is shown to emerge as the driving force behind technical invention. Seeking resolutions between incompatibilities arising between the internal milieu of a sound source and the external milieu of the modular system, the analysis reveals the appearance of metastable states within the ontogenesis of each patch. By detailing the various forms of recurrent causality in these patches, this article reveals how modular synthesis practice can serve as the site for the co-evolution of musical ideas and technical objects; a theatre of individuation that is both more-than-human in its evolutionary potential, and more-than-music in its practical application.

This article assesses the connections between 17th-century Hispanic American religious Villancicos de negro (also known as guineos or negrillas), along with secular theatre from the Modern Age, and the living Mexican tradition of Son Jarocho, particularly the Jarocho dance–song (son) known as Son de los Negritos. Therefore, I implement a methodology that links perspectives from historical musicology and ethnomusicology. This concatenation considers the continuity and memory in oral and written tradition. By doing so, I seek to discuss the impact of these transatlantic repertoires on the historical Afro-descendant communities in Mexico and the Spanish Empire of the Modern Age.

Vaporwave provides a hauntological reflection on the capitalist excesses of the 1980–1990s, a moment that Francis Fukuyama declared as The End of History. To this task, Vaporwave replays the most memorable hooks of pop songs, commercial jingles and elevator Muzak, within visual scenographies of abandoned malls and virtual realities, dotted by Miami palms and Tokyo neon. However, these decades hold another significance for Eastern Europeans, who remained haunted by their own ghosts, not of ideology, but of identity. This article contrasts Vaporwave to Hardvapour, a violent mutation that does not avoid Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, but accelerates towards it. To this task, Hardvapour collectively identifies as having Eastern European origins, and fixates on the political volatility of the region, including the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, inviting comparisons with Baudrillard's theories about the unreality of the media-military complex. Despite their different agendas and aesthetics, both Vaporwave and Hardvapour are haunted by ghosts of time, and a disappearing territoriality, architectural and geographic.

This article critiques the anthropocentric tendencies in machine listening practices and narratives, developing alternative concepts and methods to explore the more-than-human potential of these technologies through the framework of sonic fiction. Situating machine listening within the contemporary soundscape of dataveillance, the research examines post-anthropocentric threads that emerge at the intersection of datafication, subjectivation and animalisation. Theory and practice interweave in the composition of a music piece, The Spiral, enabling generative feedback between concept, sensation and technique. Specifically, the research investigates the figure of a mollusc bio-sensor between science fact and fable, as the (im)possible locus of musicality. This emergent methodology also offers new insights for other sound art and music practices aiming to pluralise what listening might be.

Seth Kim Cohen’s notion of non-cochlear sound art explores the idea of more-than-music, reframing sonic listening, shifting away from the aesthetic and towards the conceptual, reducing ‘the value of sonic pleasure in favor of a broader set of philosophical, social, political, and historical concerns’. While this notion holds academic and artistic merit, it does not acknowledge similar explorations in sound art within disabled and d/Deaf communities and developments within disability aesthetics. Works within the disability arts that fit into Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear sound art were created prior to the publication of his 2009 text In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sound Art and have continued to develop since. This article discusses Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear sound and asks the reader to view it alongside discussions of disability aesthetics and sound art works by Hard of Hearing (HoH) and d/Deaf artists. In doing so, it illustrates how disability art and aesthetics are inherently conceptual and sociopolitical and have not only been forgotten in discussion of non-cochlear sound art, but have also carved their own path.

Biomimicry shifts focus away from anthropocentric design approaches and encourages practitioners to develop a sensitivity to the interconnectedness of natural systems and their resultant potentiality as musical forms. Embracing the concepts of biomimicry necessitates a perspectival transformation from human authorship towards a reciprocal partnership with nature that stresses sustainable technological innovation in artistic expression. The need to solve design challenges in harmony with a broader ecological context means that biomimicry represents a new form of environmentally attuned sonic practice that is both communicative and interpretative of systems operating outside everyday human experience. This research employs the biomimetic process to unravel and respond to issues related to the development of form and structure at the locus of compositional practice. Furthermore, it utilises these insights to generate new knowledge through the activities of this practice and the novel insights apprehended through the triangulation of science, nature and music. Finally, it uses biomimicry to impact the compositional trajectory practically, extending beyond metaphor or representation, and offers a glimpse into realms that are more than music, more than human.

Inuit female singer-songwriters in Canada use truth-telling and narratives to offer settler listeners insight into Inuit perspectives on social issues affecting Inuit. A sensitive issue that Elisapie Isaac, Kelly Fraser and Susan Aglukark engage in their songs and social commentary is the suicide crisis of Inuit. Addressing Inuit suicide, its prevalence and the community’s response to it, these musicians unsettle listeners and challenge settlers to engage with and better understand difficult issues during this period of state-sanctioned reconciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples in Canada. This article explores the ethics of listening and responsibility that listening holds for settler audiences.

This research focuses on the embodied transmission of kamigatamai—a traditional dance genre in Japan known for its subtle minimalist movements that put an emphasis on the inner expression of the practitioners. Primarily based on the researcher’s fieldwork from 2022 to 2023 at the regular classes given by Kyoto-based master Nao Yoshimura, it investigates kamigatamai as a manifestation of the Japanese aesthetic concepts of ma/yohaku—deliberate nothingness created within/via an artwork (emptiness, stillness, silence) so that a clearance is created for the potential emanation of profound senses/meanings—and kokoro—a state of spontaneous becoming experienced via oneness with all.