While KiF Productions’ debut soundtracked the English landscape, and a road trip from Yorkshire to Devon, the duo’s contribution to Ran$om Note’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series is a score for the lifecycle of the Passion Flower. Employing similar KLF-inspired techniques of sampling and collaging as their previous release, the pair create a symphony that follows the plant from seed to sprouting, bloom, fruit and finally fuel for the next generation. Opening with birdsong, chimes, woodwinds and choral calls. Flapping wings, temple tingsha and orchestral drones. Gongs rumble and resonate. Horns hark after Jon Hassell’s “Ba Benzele”. Tribal chants are spun backwards constructing, momentarily, a tower of Babel. Other vocals are ethereal, a little eerie, “Twin Peaks”, David Lynch-ian, like `50s Sci-Fi B-movie alien sirens. Taking the set far deeper and darker than any other entry in the project.

Light comes in the form of Ghost Box-like pastoral film cues. Synths begin to sigh and swoon. Mandolin picking then makes way for new age shimmering and celestial angels. Spaced out Californians synergising with Stanley Unwin, sheets of heavenly choir harmonics, and southern spirituals. Someone says, “All of nature talks to me, if I could only figure out what it’s trying to tell me” against a backdrop of buzzing bees and harp glissandos. 

Field recordings and found sounds include crickets, frogs, freaks, hooting owls and shortwave transmissions. The latter recalling Joe Meek on a mission to Mars. These sources are woven in and around a framework that’s more The JAMMs taking tea in Virgina Astley’s “Gardens Where We Feel Secure“, more modern classical even, than a tribute to “Chill Out”, proof that KiF are moving on. That said, there’s a burst of pedal steel, a la Evil Graham Lee’s contributions “Madrugada Eterna”, that appears to riff on the theme to “Born Free”, and tender textures like 10cc meeting The Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld. 

KiF Productions’ “Passiflora” can be ordered directly from Music To Watch Seeds Grow By.