Music researcher releases new experimental album
Award-winning composer, sound artist, performer, and post-doctoral research associate Dr Helen Anahita Wilson releases her new album “Nightshade” today – the first ever album to explore the Solanaceae plant family through experimental music.
Informed by her own practice in sound studies, composition, life writing, creative and cultural industries, and health humanities, the album fuses both Western and South Asian classical traditions with free improvisation, DIY electronics, and biodata gathered directly from the plants themselves.
Nightshade explores magic, medicine, myth, and mortality through plant-derived sound and music.
Speaking on the album and recording experience, Wilson said:
"Nightshade explores magic, medicine, myth, and mortality through plant-derived sound and music. Developed alongside my research at SOAS on the applications of South Asian rhythmic theories, the project brings biodata from species within the globally prevalent Solanaceae (Nightshade) plant family to express their fascinating, nutritious, toxic, hallucinogenic, and deadly qualities through experimental composition.”
With high praise from the likes of The Wire, Sunday Times, and BBC Radio 3, Wilson has been winner of the Oram Award - which celebrates the voices of women and gender diverse artists innovation in sound, music and related technologies, and has also taken part in performances through the likes of BBC Radio 4 and will also perform at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Lithuania’s Ryšiai Festival and many more. Nightshade releases officually on October 31st, 2025.
The Department of Music at SOAS is a world-leading centre for the study of music from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas, located in the heart of a city famous for its thriving and diverse musical cultures.
