Kalabash: EcoSoundSystem
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
ArtBomb presents: EcoSoundSystem, the interactive sonic artwork turning hardcore ecological data into something we can move to.
On Friday 10th July, ArtBomb launches a mycellium-inspired soundsystem and a DIY night of live electronic music spread across two floors in Doncaster Unitarian Church.
Doors open 5pm (Pay as You Feel tickets available on the door)
“Data alone will not compel people to reverse the decline of nature…” offers Simon Pickles,“...society needs to feel the urgency before it acts and to do that, individuals must connect with nature. Connect directly through immersion and indirectly through experience.”
Simon is the Director of the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre (NEYDEC), and a prominent figure in UK biological recording, specialising in environmental planning, conservation technology, and biodiversity monitoring.
In spite of his occupation, Simon understands that the climate crisis is not only a scientific or technical challenge. It is a crisis of values, power and of storytelling. Dominated by graphs and policy papers, climate discourse fails to chart the connection between the natural world and the lived realities of ordinary people. It fails to explain why people should care about the climate crisis now, when there are so many other, immediate priorities to contend with: from rising rent prices, to putting food on the table, to safeguarding one’s own mental health. That human-nature dissonance is an idea which leader of the Green Party, Zak Polanski, has spearheaded in his reframing of climate action as foremost a social justice issue intimately tied to economic inequality.
Data alone will not move people towards climate action, but perhaps a dance-fuelled night of live electronic music and art will?
That’s where ArtBomb — Doncaster’s engine of creative disruption set in a former estate agents — comes in. Through a public programme operating at the intersection of art and activism, ArtBomb creates moments which gather strangers together and remind people of their shared humanity.
Towards the end of 2025, Simon approached ArtBomb with an idea for an ecology-focused artist residency called “Pin Back ‘Tha Lugholes”, a distinctly Yorkshire phrase meaning “listen up”. Artists from across the UK were invited to pitch a project which uses technology to translate complex ecological data sampled from in and around Doncaster into an audio-visual format which invites new ways of listening to and observing the natural environment.
Alby Daniels, Joe Caple and Aramis Gorriete, aka Kalabash — an electronic music production trio from London — responded to the brief with the idea of a live, durational sound installation which translates real time environmental data from the River Don and nearby habitats into evolving soundscapes.
Kalabash — whose original music has been featured on Radio 6 and Mixmag — have collaborated with the likes of Jelani Blackman, a London rapper featured in Kneecap’s platinum album, Fine Art (2024). In a posthumanist shift, Kalabash are now making music with the River Don.
Since November 2025, the trio have been listening, walking and recording along Doncaster’s urban waterways, harvesting subaquatic sounds, as well as the sound of local traffic and human activity.
“We’re interested in how these sonic layers co-exist” says Alby, “and how the local ecology continues to adapt in the shadow of human infrastructure”.
Ten months later, Kalabash have transformed these recordings into EcoSoundSystem, a bespoke sound system unlike anything out there.
Inspired by the branching logic of mycelial networks, EcoSoundSystem is an interactive audiovisual environment which grows from the main hall of Doncaster Unitarian Church, a hidden heritage gem tucked between a Yates’ pub and an independent guitar shop on Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre.
The installation combines large-scale projection, live plant data and synths connected to the church organ, all interconnected by a sprawling network of speakers and sound sources positioned around the space. Transforming the church hall into an immersive soundscape, the work encourages visitors to move around and explore the space, to encounter the distinction between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious state of deep listening.
At the heart of the installation sits a control station, where visitors are invited to become a DJ and shift the balance of sound and vision in the room using a 4-channel controller. In this sense, the work behaves like a living organism. The sonic environment constantly evolves and reacts to human action, implicating every visitor into a networked ecology. The result is a looping, shape-shifting track composed by hundreds of humans and underscored by nature’s unpredictable rhythms.
From 7pm, the evening will shift from sonic meditation to a night of original electronic music, synth pop, post-punk & straight-up dance beats curated by Jen Rozenfelds aka Jackhno, a Doncaster born, non-binary genderfluid electronic musician, playing house & techno influenced alt-dance & electropunk designed to get dancefloors moving. Post-lockdown, Jen has been working hard to bring the Electronic Open Mic Night movement- which first started in Manchester in 2017- to Doncaster, as well as releasing original music. You can listen to her latest track “Kandiaronk” — a bass heavy, head-nodding stoner groove — on Bandcamp.
When asked about her motivation to bringing EMOM to Doncaster, Jen said:
“To me, EMOM is about helping grassroots music in Doncaster, particularly the live electronic scene. We have a lot of creative talent in our city but it often goes unnoticed because there aren't many outlets for it, which is why a DIY attitude is so important in providing opportunities for the live & original musicians of Doncaster.”
That this sonic artwork-cum-club night is taking place in a Unitarian church hall is important.
It’s important because, as an inclusive, non-denominational faith space purpose-built to congregate people, the setting explicitly reframes the idea of strangers being gathered around music as a modern ritual, for a culture that has forgotten ritual.
This echoes what the late great Andrew Weatherall dubbed “gnostic ceremony” — the idea that dancing to electronic music amongst smoke and strobes — edges towards a kind of transcendence. Dancefloors are not just for hedonistic entertainment. They can synchronize humans emotionally, physiologically and socially.
That may have been true of the 90’s and early 00’s. The problem today is that gnostic ceremony is becoming lost to the collapse of club culture. Some of the best underground clubs across the north have closed their doors in recent years, including Wire and The Imaginarium in Leeds and most recently, The White Hotel in Manchester, due to close its doors by January 2027.
There are some electronic music festivals — such as Houghton Festival in Norfolk and Gottwood Festival in Anglesey — which manage to cultivate Weatherall’s ideas around electronic music and ritualistic ceremony by capping audience numbers at 5,000-10,000. But these experiences are only accessible to those in a position to spend £300+ on a festival ticket. What’s missing, and what we need more than ever, are contemporary, community-led music events which have their roots in DIY free party culture and teknivals.
This event, further re-inforces ArtBomb and Doncaster Unitarian Church as a both a venue for the some of the most radical new musics being played live in Doncaster and a great ‘gallery’ space for public facing experiments and sonic art installations, which saw the potential of the church as a site for large-scale sonic experiences. That DIY legacy lives on in ArtBomb’s rapidly growing DIY music programme, including Fhungus Fridays, a new gig night championed by Doncaster’s infectiously energetic youth. For ArtBomb Festival 2025, we presented Ray Lee's Siren. We witnessed hundreds of people become spellbound.
“We wanted to present a sonic artwork which exists somewhere between ecological science, art and music. There's a lot of fantastic sound-based work being developed right now, from audio walks to DIY radio, raising awareness of environmental beauty and catastrophe.”
Jennie Gilman
INFORMATION
After opening night, EcoSoundSystem will remain open as a self-running installation
Open daily 11am-4pm 10-26 July 2026
Generously supported by NEYDEC & Arts Council England.
“For ArtBomb Festival 2025, we presented Ray Lee's Siren. We witnessed hundreds of people become spellbound. We wanted to present a sonic artwork which exists somewhere between ecological science, art and music. There's a lot of fantastic sound-based work being developed right now, from audio walks to DIY radio.”
