Higher Intelligence Agency

Higher Intelligence Agency (aka HIA) was formed by Bobby Bird in Birmingham in the early 90’s during the heady days of HIA's live electronic music club Oscillate in Birmingham, where he was also resident DJ and technical director. Here HIA and other emerging acts developed live performance for immersive environments, bespoke sound systems & attuned audiences. Artists including HIA, Autechre, Biosphere & Orbital gave early live performances, some recorded onto DAT by Bird at the time, which can be heard on the Oscillate Sound Archive (link below). Early HIA tracks featured on Warp Records Artificial Intelligence 2 and Beyond Records Ambient Dub compilations. A debut LP Colourform’was released in 1993 and a second album, Freefloater'in 1995. Collaboration albums with Biosphere, Deep Space Network & Pete Namlook followed, plus an album Nothing as System Error (1997) . Post 2000, while continuing to play occasional live HIA concerts, (incl Detroit Electronic Music festival 2007) and producing HIA remixes and tracks for compilations, Bird was also a member of Modulate AV Collective releasing a 5.1 dvd for home cinema. He also started working with MAX, developing spacial audio for multi speaker installations & performances at festival and galleries and in 2016 begun working on Watt’s Orbit, making detailed recordings of 250 year old beam engines & developing them into compositions for multi-spacial live performance through an octophonic sound system. In 2020 came the Higher Intelligence Agency release Discatron, an E.P. of new material displaying the unique HIA signature sound. In addition, Freefloater and Colourform had vinyl re releases, accompanied by Preform, an album bringing together tracks from compilations plus previously unreleased tracks written around the time of Colourform. In 2022, after multiple live performances of Watt’s Orbit, a stereo version was released as the album, Song Of The Machine. Also in 2022 HIA returned to regular live performance, playing at Glastonbury, Terraforma, Ozora, Houghton and Positive Education Festivals, with more to come this year, including an Australian tour in April 2023.