The Higher Intelligence Agency is a United Kingdom ambient, ambient dub, ambient techno, downtempo and IDM project associated with Silver Stars.

History

The Higher Intelligence Agency forms in May 1992, when Bobby Bird starts the project in Birmingham alongside fellow Oscillate club collaborators. At the same time, Bird and the Oscillate collective begin running experimental electronic music nights in the city. The early material develops in a live environment, with improvised tracks performed between records.

Bird then launches work through the Birmingham-based Beyond label, where the first HIA track to appear is Ketamine Entity on Ambient Dub Volume 1. The project later issues the single Speedlearn, contributes further tracks to compilations, and releases its debut album Colourform. Additional writing input on this period comes from other Oscillate members Steve Savale, Dave Wheels, Steff Pierljewski and Fosit.

Live activity and releases

The Higher Intelligence Agency takes its experimentation onto stages across the UK, opening the 1994 year with a performance at Brixton Academy’s Megadog. It also appears at Love Parade in Berlin, Tripping on Sunshine in Copenhagen, and Oscillate - Triple X in Amsterdam, where it performs and DJs at the event, which is co-organised by Oscillate alongside Orbital, Autechre, Pentatonik and Sun Electric.

The project releases the EP Reform and is commissioned to create a half-hour work for an installation at Musée’ Lilim in Carcassonne, in the south of France. In 1995 it records remixes for Biosphere’s Novelty Waves and Pressure of Speech’s Mothmath, plays Glastonbury Festival, and releases its second album, Freefloater.

Collaborations and later work

In October 1995, The Higher Intelligence Agency and Biosphere perform a live collaboration on a mountain in Tromsø, Norway, with music based on samples taken from the sounds of the mountain cable cars and sponsored by the Norwegian Arts Board. In 1996 it records an album with Deep Space Network, and also works on remixes for Obconic Freeform and Space Time Continuum. Its collaborative album with Biosphere, Polar Sequences, appears in August.

Further collaborations follow in 1997, with Deep Space Network Meets Higher Intelligence Agency on Source in February and S.H.A.D.O., a collaboration with Pete Namlook, in June. A second Biosphere collaboration takes place at the Birmingham Frequencies live event in October 1997. In 1998 Bobby Bird sets up the Headphone label through Fax, mainly to release his own material and collaborations, and its first release is Nothing in December. The project continues with S.H.A.D.O. 2 with Pete Namlook in 1999, and Birmingham Frequencies, a HIA/Biosphere release on Headphone, in 2000.