Musician, sonic explorer, nature listener, Outdoor Lover, meet Brian D’Souza (aka Auntie Flo)
Brian D’Souza is reimagining how we hear—and feel—the natural world. A boundary-pushing DJ, producer, and field-recording artist, he moves fluidly between late-night dance floors and quiet coastlines, translating the rhythms of plants, fungi, and sea waves into living soundscapes. Known globally as Auntie Flo, Brian embodies curiosity, attunement, and the deep calm that comes from spending time outdoors with open ears. Whether he’s hiking to a peak after a gig, capturing wild sound in remote places, or creating new ecosystems of music, Brian reminds us that listening—real listening—is a path to freedom.
"Nature gives me a way to decompress from the intensity of nightlife. I always look for a patch of wilderness after a gig."
Can you tell us a little about your background — where you grew up, and how music first entered your life?
I was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland. My father is Scottish, and my mother is Kenyan-Goan. They had a solid music collection across a range of styles, but nothing too out of the ordinary. My real musical education began with late-night shows on BBC Radio 1—John Peel in particular. His selections sent me on a weekly musical treasure hunt: I’d jot down the tracks he played, then head to my local record shop on the weekend to try and find them.
You perform and release music under the name Auntie Flo. Where does that alias come from, and what does it mean to you?
The name is an actual Auntie of mine – Auntie Florie. She lived in Goa until her death a couple of years ago. My mum thought we were similar so often used to talk about her. I also liked the idea of having the word ‘Flo(w)’ in my name as Flow States are important in my music.
How did your journey as a DJ and producer in the club and electronic music scene begin?
Glasgow has an incredible music scene, so I had plenty of opportunities to dive into underground club culture. Places like Soma Records, Optimo, RubaDub, Harri & Domenic, Monorail, Sub Club, and The Art School opened my ears to a wide range of electronic sounds, which I happily soaked up. I basically lived in the club during those early years, absorbing everything I could about the music and DJing. When I started university, I moved to Edinburgh and immediately began putting on club nights and hosting a radio show.
At what point did you start to bring the natural world into your music, and what sparked that shift?
I’ve always incorporated field recordings into my work. I did a master’s in Sound Design, and we had a module on field recording, foley, and manipulating those samples to create electroacoustic music. My 2018 album Radio Highlife (Brownswood) was essentially a document of my musical travels, with every track built from iPhone recordings I made in the places I toured—Havana, Cape Town, the Arctic Circle, Uganda, and beyond.
But my explorations of the natural world really deepened during the Covid lockdown in 2020. That period pushed me to level up my field recording practice with a range of high-end microphones and to dive into the world of bioelectricity as a new form of musical composition - what I call biosonification.
Much of your recent work uses plants, fungi, and other living systems to generate sound. How does bionsonification work, and what excites you most about it?
I find the natural world endlessly inspiring - William Blake said that “nature is imagination itself,” and I feel that deeply. Biosonification is essentially the process of converting data collected from a living organism - usually in real time - into sound information, whether that’s MIDI notes or data used to shape amplitude, frequency, timbre, and so on.
I tend to use two main approaches. The first involves capturing the electrical impulses that all living things produce and mapping that real-time data onto MIDI notes, which I then run through my modular synth to create a kind of ecosystem of sound. I usually work this way with plants and fungi.
The second approach is capturing sounds directly from nature - like forests or sea waves-then running them through a granular synthesizer and into my modular system. This lets me separate the sound into different frequency bands and use each one to trigger different elements of the composition. Using sea waves in what I call my “Sea Synth” setup is especially exciting because you can amplify the movement of the tides, using their natural timing to shape the soundscape.
What do you discover - about music, about yourself - when you’re outside creating with nature compared to being in a studio or on a stage?
With biosonification, the most interesting discoveries all center around time - how we perceive it as humans, and how differently it’s experienced in the natural world. We use time as a construct to make sense of things, but every organism has its own rhythm. The lifespan of a tree, for instance, unfolds across centuries, while fungi can double in size overnight. Listening to the sea or to these organisms challenges our sense of “Gestalt”—the way we group and categorize things to understand the world quickly.
Breaking those mental schemas forces us to adjust our listening, and that’s the most rewarding part of working this way. You start to realize there are entirely different ways of interpreting the world around us - perspectives that, for me and many others, were previously hidden in plain sight.
You’ve made music for packed clubs and festivals, but now you also spend time in quiet landscapes recording and composing. How do you experience the contrast between those two worlds - the intensity of nightlife and the stillness of nature?
Yin and yang! Finding balance helps me avoid getting carried away by the extremes of either world, while still giving me space to explore everything that creatively excites me. I love the visceral energy of being in a club, and I love connecting with people through making them dance. That buzz never really fades—I’m addicted to the flow state that emerges in the best dancefloor and DJ moments.
At the same time, I feel a deep connection to the natural world. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we struggle when we’re surrounded only by concrete. Nature gives me a way to decompress from the intensity of nightlife. In recent years, I’ve made it a point to find a patch of nature near wherever I’m staying so I can escape after a gig. When I played the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, I DJed until 5 a.m., woke up at 10, and hiked to the highest peak overlooking the lake. When I DJed in Osaka on New Year’s Eve, I immediately took a train to the mountains and spent three days in solitude with Buddhist monks.
You recently released your album In My Dreams (I’m a Bird and I’m Free). What inspired it, and how does it fit into the evolution of your music?
This album was five years in the making, spanning both the pre- and post-Covid lockdown periods. I’d just finished touring my previous album, Radio Highlife, during which we ran into countless visa issues trying to bring my Senegalese percussionist, Mame N’Diack Seck Thiam, to the UK and beyond. This was pre-Brexit, when immigration was already a major topic—and it still is. I’ve always found huge value in crossing borders and collaborating with musicians from different backgrounds, so every track on the album became a fusion of styles, cultures, languages, and personalities, with sessions in places like Kenya, South Korea, Turkey, Cuba, and more.
The title reflects the idea that birds are free to travel the world, limited only by their own physical abilities—whereas humans have created borders and rules that often prevent this.
As you continue to blur the boundaries between technology and ecology, what do you hope listeners take away from experiencing your work?
I think at best my work challenges people to listen in an active manner. Where it’s the way my soundscape compositions help people tune into the natural world, or the way my music as Auntie Flo tells a story about the connectedness of the planet.
Looking ahead, what are you most excited to explore — whether it’s in music, collaborations, or your own connection to the outdoors?
I’ve got so many things lined up for next year! We’ll be releasing a Plants Can Dance compilation with some amazing artists from around the world. I’m also launching a deep-listening mobile app called Soniferous, which has been in the works for over five years. It’s essentially a lifetime’s worth of compositions based on the natural world, as well as a new platform to release music from the label. I’m hoping to take on more nature-based commissions too, along with performing live again—both with my band and as a DJ.
You spend long stretches outdoors recording and connecting with natural environments. How does that time outside influence not just your music, but also your overall sense of wellbeing?
It’s hugely important. It’s no coincidence that many of the greatest thinkers in history took time outside seriously and made sure they weren’t working all the time. I’m a fan of Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory, which highlights how regular breaks in nature act as a system reset, allowing us to perform day-to-day tasks much more effectively. It also gives us a chance to step away from the attentional vices that tend to dominate our lives.
When you are out in nature which of the Utu products you have tried woks best for you?
I now always travel with your Active Kit it’s perfect for my expeditions and my 6 year old son loves your sunscreen too, which is the first sunscreen he’s ever liked!
Listen to a recent Auntie Flo mix here
Keep up to date with all things Auntie Flo here
