If there’s one attitude with which you should go into Electric Daisy, I would suggest ‘meditative’. At only twenty-five minutes or so long, this self-contained sound-art experience gives from the outset a sense of being inducted into a ritual; there’s a smell of incense permeating the space, bathed in green light, while on a projector screen particles float languidly across the breadth of a glass jar.

The multi-sensory experience is the baby of Joana Burd, Ned Barker and Nicholas Gomez, and centres upon the unique properties of Spilanthes oleracea, the titular ‘Electric Daisy’ (so called because, when ingested, the plant’s buds produce a tingly, numbing sensation in the mouth). Initially, this sensation formed the anchor to the piece - infusions of tea made from the plant were to be given to attendees before the show began, so the hum on the palate would be echoed by the multilayered soundscape issuing from the speakers. These sounds are taken, we are told, from data produced by the plant itself, making it in essence a collaborator on the production.

However, for health and safety reasons, the tea element of the show could no longer go ahead, so the show as I viewed it had undergone some tactical rejigging. The soundscape was now front and centre, accompanied by a brief visual introduction in which AI voices developed specifically for the piece introduced (I think?) the concept of robotic single cell reproduction and autonomous replication.

I use the brackets here because in all honesty it was difficult to glean quite what concepts were being outlined - explanatory subtitles zip by without time to read them fully, and both they and the visuals were obscured in the compact setting if you hadn’t picked the right seat. Perhaps this section is meant to be less explanatory and more evocative, planting (no pun intended) the fusion of mechanical and biological behaviour in our minds before experiencing technical rhythms generated by a natural source. But this framing device was a touch too opaque and had me feeling a bit wrong-footed as we headed into the core of the experience.

The soundscape itself is an incredibly complex piece of production, and went some way to conquering my misgivings about the slightly disjointed preamble. The all-encompassing binaural mix is like listening to an ethereal consciousness in conversation with itself. Far-off thunderstorms of dopplering bassy rumbles are answered by tinny metallic drips and drops, like raining mercury. A shrill electric whine creeps up your spine and dances from ear to ear, before descending in pitch like a falling bomb. It put me in mind of the vast, interconnected complexity of structures like mycelium; intricate, otherworldly methods of communication with which, it is implied, we have the potential to connect.

That being said, it was a shame the electric daisy tea wasn’t more of a feature. While the audio experience was deeply intriguing and thought-provoking, it loses a certain directness and viscerality by not having that extra bodily component - as an audience member, you’re observing rather than communing with the electric daisy’s properties. For those of you partial to a mild psychedelic, that could well be a decent substitute to achieve the more full-body experience the initial concept promised. I’m excited to see more from this trio and hopefully experience the piece as intended sometime down the line, complete with its signature beverage; its absence doesn’t tarnish Electric Daisy, by any means, but it does leave it lacking a certain buzz.