Biography
Biota are a musical
collective from Fort Collins, CO who focus on the electronic
manipulation of acoustic sounds, mainly instruments such as
naes, hurdy-gurdies, keyboards, percussion and, most recently,
vocals. They started out as the musical wing of the Mnemonists,
a group of musicians, scientists and visual artists whose self-proclaimed
goal was to question the desirability of bombarding children
with technology; the musical wing split off in the mid-80s and
renamed itself Biota, though the painters still provide their
colorful liner notes and cover art.
Their sound
has gradually changed over time. Their early work (which I haven't
heard at the time of this writing) is reputed to be very abstract,
noisy and difficult to hear as coming from acoustic sources.
Starting in the early 90s, though, they have gradually taken
on a more accessible sound: blurry, otherworldly, texturally
dense and heavily influenced by jazz and various forms of folk
music. Their last two albums have also had vocals for the first
time, adding a distorted indie-pop sensibility to their eclectic
mix, and 2001's Invisible Map shows the increasing classical
influence of pianist C.W. Vrtacek, also known as the guitarist
from Forever Einstein. - Alex Temple [March 2003]
Almost
Never (1992)
[CD - RéR BCD3 - 1992]
Working your way backwards through Biota's catalogue, as many
seem to, you may be surprised by Almost Never. It's not
that it's so different from their later work; the signature Eastern
European folk melodies, wavering distorted drumbeats and blurry,
liquid sound are certainly present in abundance. And it's not
just the fact that there are no vocals. What separates Almost
Never from its successors is how long it takes to change,
how slow and expansive its development. Its 20 tracks are not
stand-alone compositions, but grouped into three larger pieces,
and the track divisions within each piece serve more as markers
of changing source material than compositional points of separation.
And even within each individual track, the development of material
is often more fleshed-out. In part 3 of "Burn Daylight," for example,
a Middle-Eastern sounding reed melody is suspended over acoustic
guitar strumming which gradually builds in speed and volume until
it reaches a real climax. Part 2 of "Circling These" also spends
nearly four minutes gradually thinning out the guitar snaps, spinning
vibrato noises and metallic clangs laid over the thudding drumming
at its core.
Of the three
pieces, "Burn Daylight" is the most like the Biota we know and
love from Object Holder and Invisible Map -- except
for the stately, almost chorale-like flügelhorn passages that
bracket it, and the persistent diatonicism of its ambient background
mush. "Circling These" is, not surprisingly, the dense middle
section, opening with a whirling chaos of instruments playing
in about five different folk traditions at once and closing
with a rollicking dance that threatens to knock down anything
that gets in its way. In between are such things as a cheerful
Celtic-sounding tune (complete with pseudo-bagpipe drone), an
anxious and jittery piece for percussion (drum kit, tom-toms,
miscellaneous scratching and gurgling noises), and a piece that
alternates between dark organ melodies and bright, vibrating
metallic noises that suggest ancient Asian rituals, all over
a backdrop of loud, reverb-drenched thumps and fluttering skwawks.
The most unusual
part of Almost Never, though, is its final third. "Old
Reason Road," as its title suggests, has a bit of an Americana
tinge to it. Its first track brings back the flügelhorn with
an accompaniment in triple rhythm that sounds like a more dissonant
version of middle-period ("Appalachian Spring") Copland. Furthermore,
its third through sixth parts form a completely continuous fourteen-minute
movement which starts out as pure electronic liquid and what
sounds like mutilated voices, but soon develops a loping guitar
line. Such a straightforward melody doesn't stand a chance,
though; it's soon consumed by what sounds like power tools.
But what's that -- a saxophone solo? Clear acoustic guitar chords
-- MAJOR chords -- appear as the background noise fades out,
but soon they're joined by organs and pulsing harmonies made
by unidentifiable instruments, and the whole thing gets lost
in a tonal blur, which slowly disintegrates into a gray wall
of thick, foggy static. But lest you think it's over, a sort
of sickened, melancholy saloon music gradually comes in on top
of the already-huge mix of sounds... and finally we get flügelhorn
and bass clarinet once again, playing a final chorale before
the album gives way to reflective silence. -
Alex Temple [March 2003]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Biota
- Object Holder (1995)
[CD - RéR BCD4 - 1995]
Imagine if a
jazz trumpeter from a smoky nightclub, a group of Eastern
European and Middle Eastern folk musicians, an indie-pop band
that sounds like a cross between Blonde Redhead and Circulatory
System, and an experimental ambient-electronic musician all
got together to record an album for aliens underwater.
Yes, it's a
glib description. But Biota's music isn't too easy to
describe. It rarely sounds like any other music out there,
and when you do notice something familiar, it quickly gets
enveloped in other sounds or disappears into a complex sonic
haze. Different musical phrases often overlap, and sometimes
it seems that entirely independent pieces are happening at
the same time. Rhythms are always slightly out of sync many
sounds are drenched in reverb, allowing them to stay in your
ear while something new starts. As a result, there are
no sharp stylistic edges; the change between different types
of music is gradual.
Although Object
Holder has 24 tracks, it is essentially in three parts.
"Swallow" and "This Ridge" are short piano pieces by C.W.
Vrtacek, much simpler and thinner in texture than the rest
of the album, and they serve to separate the sections. The
first part kicks off with the astounding "Bumpreader," the
longest track here and one of the most complex: strange watery
noises give way to a sort of polyrhythmic folk dance played
on unrecognizable instruments, which in turn is overtaken
by Henry Cow-like noise and unsteady percussion, then a sparse
and fractured composite of echoing drumbeats and brief fragments
of atonal melody. The tracks that follow develop this style
of music, simultaneously vague and lucid, completely acoustic
and heavily electronic. It is not until the seventh
track, "Reckoning Falls," that a human voice appears -- that
of the wonderful Susanne Lewis, also known for her work in
Hail and Thinking Plague. She sings cryptic lyrics about
Uri Geller, while the strange percussion work and electronic
sounds of the last six tracks combine with guitar playing
that almost sounds suitable for an experimental indie-pop
song.
Songs dominate
the second part of the album. The three instrumental
tracks, "Steam Trader," "Understander" and "Cinder," recall
the first section, but are a bit simpler. The middle
part of the album, then, is somewhat "easier" to listen to
than the rest of it. The songs are very catchy, while
at the same time being extremely strange, and Tom Katsimpalis'
and Chris Cutler's slightly disturbing lyrics reflect the
alien nature of the music perfectly. The centerpiece
of the album is certainly "Distraction," which builds slowly
from Susanne Lewis singing with creepy flatness over jazzy
guitar chords and drumming to a truly scary climax of multi-tracked
voices singing lyrics like "other people are just rungs shouting
words at my feet", weird alarm-like tremolos from some
unknown instrument, and, in the background, the same squelching
wave sounds that opened the album.
The third part
seems to recapitulate the first in reverse. There are only
two songs, and they occur towards the beginning of the part.
The music is more unsettling, though: the strange tremolos
from "Distraction" reappear in "More Silence," and "Coat"
features lyrics about the need to be "pressed by a mass" that
hit very close to home while seeming totally off-the-wall
psychologically. The instrumentals that follow are similar
to those at the beginning of the album, but slower and perhaps
more despondent in mood. "The Trunk" closes the album
as a counterpart to "Bumpreader," quite similar but more chaotic
and with less audible repetition.
Sounds like
an absolutely fantastic album. Unfortunately, there
are a few problems that, for me at least, keep it from being
perfect. The main problem is the length: I just can't
concentrate that hard for 70 minutes. This is particularly
frustrating in that Object Holder is one of those albums
where you can't skip anything without losing something important.
I tend to either listen to it in sections or just tune out
for a couple minutes every now and then, which is unfortunate.
My other complaint is C.W. Vrtacek's tunes (excluding "Visible
Gap," where his piano playing is largely buried under other
sounds). The combination of general consonance and the
apparently constant use of the sustain pedal give these two
tracks a cheesy, almost movie-score-like feeling. Luckily,
though, they're very short, and act more as interludes than
as essential parts of the album. And anyway, these complaints
are certainly outweighed by the originality, beauty and unbelievable
richness of the music, and Object Holder is certainly
a worthy purchase for anyone interested in experimental music.
- Alex Temple
[October 2001]
Invisible
Map (2001)
[CD - RéR BCD5 - 2001]
Welcome to the quieter, simpler Biota.
No, don't
worry -- this is still excellent and uncompromising music. Still,
the textures on Invisible Map are often less muddled
than those on previous albums, and the music seems more composed.
Sound sources are easier to recognize, and the folk influence
is less diluted, giving us pieces like the stompy Russian dance
of "Port," which for some reason makes me think of someone's
aunt clomping around at a wedding. It's probably this increase
in clarity that makes Invisible Map a manageable listen,
even at 76 minutes long.
There are
still some moments that could've been straight off Object
Holder -- the all-out chaos of "Paste," and "Mineral," which
actually samples "Bumpreader." There are also pieces with vocals,
though they're few and far between -- only six of the 37 tracks.
New singer Genevieve Heistek sounds a lot like Susanne Lewis,
and brings a similar indie-scene sensibility to the mix -- but
where Lewis's vocals were sometimes cut up and often accompanied
by arhythmic collage, these songs are a dark but almost always
straightforward mix of Alsace Lorraine-style girlie-pop and
burbly Eastern-Euro-folk.
What makes Invisible
Map
really distinctive, though, is neither its occasional songs
nor its textural clarity (which, to be fair, is also present
to an extent on Almost Never). The tracks that really
catch my ear are tracks like "Olive Drab Marionette," an extremely
quiet, dissonant and beautiful piece of contemporary classical
chamber music, and "Call," which accompanies its Slavic folkisms
with plaintive organ chords that remind me of the opening of
Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place." Never before has
Biota's music been so subtle or so spooky. Some tracks are downright
ghostly, such as "Dustman," with its low cello-like glissandi,
and "Remodel a Whisper," in which steel guitar and piano trade
spare motifs over a quiet wall of sound that wavers in and out
of tune like the final chord of an old reel-to-reel movie. C.W.
Vrtacek's piano work has also improved dramatically since 1995;
for instance, "Canopy" and "Air on Water" could be right out
of Bartók's Mikrokosmos series, and "Red's Big Day" infuses
the same sort of motifs with jazzy syncopations.
Oddly, while
most of the album is very quiet, simple, subtle and largely
focused on disturbing bass noises and disembodied, out-of-tune
string synths, the last few tracks get some of that familiar
Biota chaos going on again. As well as "Paste," we have the
demented carnival atmosphere of "Flicker," and the clunky, thudding
dirge of "Soil & Token," featuring violin, accordion and metal
percussion. And the finale, "Presto the Human," careens around
as hyperactively as anything you've ever heard from these guys.
-
Alex Temple [March 2003]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
