Plantas que viven espontáneamente takes it title from a Botanical text from the 1800s. The title inspired a concept to try and create a new music that is improvisational and spontaneous in nature but that doesn’t hinge on more outdated thoughts of improvisation, such as the solo. A cyclical, spontaneous music in which each players choices are led and interconnected with the entire group in a deeper sense. Between Coronavirus lockdowns in 2020, we got together a group of Edinburgh-based musicians who hadn’t ever played together and most of whom hadn’t even met, with the idea of recording the results of a spontaneous session under the banner of the ‘East and West Rendezvous’ collective. It was the first time the musicians had played with anyone in at least 4 months and was recorded in a short period in which restrictions were briefly relaxed. The resultant music radiates a joy at playing once again, exaltation of new social interaction, and a release of those frustrations and darker feelings that the lockdown period brought to light. 8 musicians were invited to play with each given the brief to focus on the collective sound as a whole and reject any traditional thought of riffs, repetition or through composition in favor of the pieces developing over minutes or hours as a maleable whole. Our plan was to attempt to reject more linear conceptions of music which force us to imagine a hierarchy within a band or a composition - where one element or player is elevated ahead of another in terms of contribution importance. An influence for the project, Shabaka Hutchings, stated recently that ‘this way of seeing must be rejected for the cyclical view which sees the prominence of individual players as transient but the group contribution as reaching for eternity’. In other words, it was an attempt to create improvised, ‘ego-less’ music. 
 
In keeping with the spirit of the artistic collective, we wanted to make it a collaboration beyond music too. We asked our good friend, artist Jacob Littlejohn, to be involved, as part of the collective. Jacob painted the artwork while using the music and ethos of the project as his guide. He says of his process for his part: ‘I’ve been focusing on spontaneous mark making and reactionary decisions to the materials and process of application. To try and fit with what [East & West Rendezvous] said in regards to staying neutral, I have treated each layer individually, with each next layer being influenced only by the last, but working in opposites in order to try and create a cohesive and unique outcome.