Dan Nicholls Dave De Rose Lou Zon present second collaborative album
Plants Heal emerge from two days at Sonic Playground Studios in Athens with their second album. The trio—Dan Nicholls on synths, Dave De Rose on drums, and Lou Zon handling visuals—recorded Forest Dwellers without predetermined structures, allowing the music to develop through real-time interaction.
Artist: Plants Heal
Release Date: 2025-11-28
Genres: Ambient, Dub, Electronica, Trip Hop
Label: Quindi Records
The album spans eight tracks that pull from dub techno, trip hop, kosmische, and ambient territories without settling into any single category. Avena Moon opens with slippery syncopation while Alien Hardware pivots through angular rhythmic shifts. Yarrow maintains a contemplative pace before Space Ballad rolls into warmer, funk-influenced terrain.
Nicholls has worked extensively across electronic music contexts, collaborating with Squarepusher, Goldie, Alabaster DePlume, and Matthew Herbert. His keyboard work spans jazz, electronic, and experimental territories, with releases on labels including Ninja Tune and Edition Records. De Rose operates through various percussive projects including Agile Experiments, focusing on free improvisation and electronic-acoustic hybrid approaches.
The project originated from Nicholls and Zon‘s Free Movements events in London, which began in 2018 to explore connections between instrumental performance, live electronics, and DJ culture. De Rose and Nicholls played together frequently at these gatherings, eventually formalizing their collaboration with Zon‘s visual component for their 2021 debut album.
Zon works with analogue footage processed through video mixers and synthesizers during live performances. Her visual library centers on medicinal plants including yarrow, hawthorn, nettle, and thistle. These plants appear in processed form on the album cover, designed with her brother Arthur Boer. Additional footage captured during the Athens sessions feeds back into the project’s ongoing live presentations.
Forest Dwellers arrives through Quindi Records on November 28, distributed by Wordandsound in Europe and Forced Exposure in North America.
Tracklist:
- Avena Moon
- Kyoot
- Alien Hardware
- Low Nova
- Yarrow
- Forest Dwellers
- Thistle
- Space Ballad
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