Biota - Object Holder (1995)

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Biota - Object Holder (1995)

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Biota was founded in 1979 in Fort Collins, Colorado, as the Mnemonist Orchestra. Over the years, the Mnemonist Orchestra developed into Biota (the musical contingent) and Mnemonists (the visual contingent). Both Biota and Mnemonists work as one on productions of musical and visual components. 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.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 track.

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Biota - Object Holder (1995)

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Biota - Object Holder (1995)

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Biota - Object Holder (1995)

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