Hyphae
Hyphae is an album of improvisations by Andromeda is Coming — Charles Martin and Dr Alexander Hunter — recorded in late 2024 at the ANU School of Music. The sessions used our IMPSY-powered intelligent instruments, which listen to our MIDI controllers and continue performing when we stop, pushing our synths into sonic states we’d never have reached on our own.
Read more about the recording sessions: Recording Hyphae with Intelligent Musical Instruments.
Hyphae will be release on 1 June 2026 through our Collected Resonances label on Bandcamp. You can stream Hyphae below:
Liner Notes
Letting things grow.
Hyphae is the co-creative project of Charles Martin and Alexander Hunter performing electronic instruments in collaboration with two interconnected machine-learning agents. Reacting against big-tech steal-all-your-art approaches to creative artificial intelligence, this project emphasises human touch and gesture with continuous computational input and bespoke, self-collected data.
Our work connects our unique synth and field-recording practice with, Charles Martin’s IMPSYpi, an intelligent musical instrument platform that attempts to perform like a human by controlling parameters on our synths over a MIDI connection. The IMPSYpis listen to signals from our physical music controllers, and attempt to continue performing when we stop. IMPSYpi is deliberately small-data, using a machine-learning model trained on our own improvisation. These intelligent instruments are beautifully imperfect; sometimes playing like us but often defying expectations, leaving our synths in in-human, but fascinating sonic states.
Even though our instruments are trained on human data, we don’t expect them to be humans. They blend into our instruments, pushing our sounds into unexpected places, leaving us to update our creative intentions moment-to-moment.
Hyphae articulates a truly co-creative practice where the output sound relies critically on both the artistic voice of the people performing and the computational model to make music that has never been heard before.
Tracking took place in December 2024 at the Big Band Room, ANU School of Music. Mixing and mastering was completed in March 2026 at KV Productions, Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centre.
This work was created on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land and we acknowledge the traditional owners and Elders past and present.
Releases June 1, 2026
Credits:
- Charles Martin: iPad synths and samples with IMPSYpi instance 1
- Alexander Hunter: laptop synths and samples with IMPSYpi instance 2
- Mixing and mastering by Kimmo Vennonen.
Track 1: Spore
A dense and synth driven dialogue between the two musicians and intelligent instruments. This track features a progression of unusual timbres and a shifting feeling of control.
A spore lands, germinates, and sends a hyphal tip into the dark, mapping the first edges of what will become a network of exploration and collaboration.
Track 2: Hyphal Growth
This track moves from industrial to natural with an initial section applying field recordings and granular synthesis. These timbres support melodic lead elements interacting across the top in the second half of the track.
Hyphae from two compatible strains meet, fuse, and share a common cytoplasm, forming a dikaryotic mycelium that carries two nuclei in one body.
Track 3: Networked Body
A shifting morse-code sequence entry and motif distinguishes this track. The second half involves a dark atmosphere and an ambient shift between the musicians.
The mycelium spreads through the substrate, forming a hidden web that can link multiple plants and fungi via a common mycorrhizal network, exchanging nutrients and communicating signals.
Track 4: Release
A percussive noise entry shapes a return to the dense noise of the opening track. Dramatic synth sirens resonate over the returning natural sounds leading to an intense final section.
The mycelium lifts/ascends, developing a fruiting body, where nuclei finally unite and meiosis produces new spores, scattering the network’s legacy into a shared field of air and soil.