Phono Synthesis by Zach Tenorio

One of my favorite records of all time is Stevie Wonder's 1979 double LP 'Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants'. It always struck me as this strange, sublime outlier. Stevie's grand followup to Songs in the Life, was a partially instrumental soundtrack to a documentary that promoted pseudoscientific claims; basically that plants have emotions.

To me, Stevie's record sounds like walking through a botanical garden. His synthesizer's tones match the exact feeling I get when I'm walking through my LA garden. Even more remarkable is that Stevie has never laid eyes on a plant.

You can imagine my delight when I found out about Mort Garson's 1976 instrumental synthesizer record 'Plantasia'. This record's recent resurgence is astonishing and not at all surprising. During the first year of the pandemic, nurseries were reporting a 270% increase in sales. Seed distributors' websites were crashing. It makes perfect sense that a record designed specifically for plants to listen to, was blossoming.

As Jocie and I got deeper into our garden, these two records resonated profoundly and in August 2021, I started recording my own 'Plant Based Record.' Two months later, it was complete.

I hope this "unofficial", "unauthorized" sequel album finds its way into your gardens and that it can bring you and your plants happiness.

Zach Tenorio is the keyboardist and co-founder of Arc Iris.