CARA STACEY
Hypha
Hypha is a series of seven new works composed by Cara Stacey. Working with multispecies provocation, time travel and code, Stacey explores how improvising and creating with tape, de-composition, images and mould could shape our listening, opening it up to dissonance, unpredictability and change.
Stacey was invited by Lizabé Lambrechts to listen and respond to several tapes in the Hidden Years Music Archive that have decayed due to age, handling and storage. She used these soundscapes in conjunction with decaying negative images from the archive as prompts for her compositions and explores decay particularly as it manifests in liminal or transitional zones.
Hypha
The first piece, Hypha, draws its name from the long, branching filaments that make up the structure of fungi. Like fungal growths that thread through and break down organic matter, this work embraces the principle of slow, entangled transformation. Inspired by the Japanese practice of kintsugi, in which broken ceramics are repaired with gold to highlight rather than conceal their fractures, Stacey used the recorded audio as the central material, while the live performers engage with it delicately, occupying the sonic “cracks,” and weaving into its textures much like fungal strands infiltrating hidden spaces.
The second piece, Seams, explores decay as something that occurs in border zones and transitional spaces. Here, the live performers occupy a more prominent role, while the background audio remains soft and minimal, marked by electronic bleeps, stray noises, and the subtle crackle of studio artefacts. Much of the material was sourced from long, unedited recording sessions—moments when musicians were quietly listening back to takes, waiting to begin, simply breathing into the record, or when speakers were preparing for a take.
The third piece, Dickman Reberio (named after a title of the decayed archival audio file featured), begins with a folk song penned by Bob Dylan —clear, melodic, and recognisable. As the recording plays (and Stacey sings with it in duet form), the song subtly decays, its clarity becoming increasingly distorted and unstable. Stacey amplified and enhanced these distortions with various audio effects to accentuate the material’s fragility and instability, and highlight various captivating frequencies, transforming the piece into a meditation on memory’s fragility. Dylan’s canonical piece is paired with another song and a similarly famous woman’s creative voice, You go to my head (written by Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots), a piece made famous by Billie Holiday. The ensemble dissolves the fabric of both songs, both often performed over recent decades, using effects that twist and decay sound as it emerges. The performers move in and around this sonic erosion, responding to the shifts in texture and tone of this small vocal diptych.
The fourth piece, Code, is a graphic score based on three images selected from the archive (see above) to serve as visual prompts for musical interpretation. While no traditional notation is used, the performers are given a set of rules developed by Stacey to guide their interpretation and response to the visual information. These rules are set to shape the performers’ approaches to reading the images as a kind of visual code or stimulus for performance. The piece is performed as three short movements and changes every time it is played.
In the fifth piece, Grain and Dot, Stacey imagined the microscopic interactions between different species of mould and fungi within the archive. These interchanges—simultaneously competitive and symbiotic—became the conceptual ground for a musical response to nonhuman agencies, offering an aural model of interspecies negotiation. The clicking sound, which interacts with the performed and other archival music and sound, is drawn from a hydrophone recording, made by Stacey, of fish sounds, adding to the multispecies conversation.
The sixth piece, Syntrophy, extends this logic into performance itself. Drawing on the concept of syntrophy—the mutual reliance between species’ metabolic processes – the performers approach the piece as an improvised musical game. One performer begins with a musical idea that acts as a kind of substrate; the others respond by “digesting” that material, altering and diminishing it through repetition and transformation. Roles then switch, creating a reciprocal ecology of sound. The outcome is inherently unpredictable. This method foregrounds decay as a relational, improvisational process.
The last piece is titled End Song. Following the reworked sung diptych heard earlier in the set, Stacey introduces one of her own lyrical compositions, which echoes a folk music idiom in form and arrangement, rooted in a distinctly period-specific aesthetic of South African English folk music of the 1970s. It continues the thread of sonic disintegration and plays with the idea of how endings, romantic and otherwise, happen and are sounded. Similar to the sung songs heard earlier, the stylistic traits of the piece draw attention to how cultural memory is both preserved and altered through the materials that carry it.
Most of these pieces, heard live in concert in early 2026, can be heard on the album Hypha (Kit Records, 2026). This can be found on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms.
Performers:
Cara Stacey
Cara Stacey is a South African musician, composer, and researcher based at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she lectures in creative music technologies and composition. Her work engages archival sound, oral traditions, and experimental composition, often exploring the relationships between music, memory, and history. She performs on piano, bow instruments, and voice, and works across performance, installation, and collaborative research contexts. Stacey has presented her work locally and internationally, and frequently collaborates with artists, musicians, and scholars. Her practice is shaped by close listening, improvisation, and a sustained engagement with sound as both material and method.
Keenan Ahrends is a South African guitarist, composer, and educator based in Johannesburg. His work spans jazz, improvised music, and interdisciplinary collaboration, often engaging with South African musical histories and contemporary performance practice. He performs regularly as a soloist and ensemble musician and has appeared at major festivals and venues locally and internationally. Ahrends is also active as a teacher and mentor, contributing to music education and development initiatives across Gauteng. His practice combines composition and improvisation, with a focus on listening, interaction, and the evolving role of the guitar within diverse musical contexts.
Matthijs van Dijk
Matthijs van Dijk is a South African composer working across film, television, and contemporary performance. He studied composition at the University of Cape Town and has composed scores for numerous award-winning films, documentaries, and series, collaborating with leading directors in South Africa and internationally. Alongside his screen work, he is involved in experimental and interdisciplinary projects that explore sound, narrative, and technology. Van Dijk’s practice moves between composed and improvised forms for small and large ensembles, often engaging live performance, electronics, and collaboration. His work reflects a strong interest in how sound shapes atmosphere, storytelling, and audience experience across different media.
