Biota
Musique Actuelle 1990
*2023 stock* 'This rare live appearance of the reclusive Biota collective was recorded in 1990 at Montreal Musiques Actuelles in Quebec, Canada. Although the performance has its moments, overall it serves as a reminder that Biota, at their best, were and are a studio creation that owe much of their magic to the electro-acoustic alchemy of founding members Mark Derbyshire and especially William Sharp. The group makes a valiant attempt to capture the dense, disorienting studio processing in the li…
Funnel to a Thread
Since the late 1970s Biota has ploughed its own furrow, producing a body of work that resembles nothing anyone else has done or is yet doing. Their compositions evolve in long, constantly shifting timbral blocks filled with fragments and echoes of quasi-familiar musical languages and sounds – or none - and use instrumental resources that span half a millennium and two thirds of the planet to create unique combinations of timbral colour in constant motion; this is a music in which everything is i…
Cape Flyaway
After 5 years of extensive and careful work, the new and much anticipated CD by this extraordinary collective, who have no parallels, no rivals and no peers, is at last complete. It’s a dense and indescribable orchestration of electric and acoustic guitars, clavioline, trumpet, Hammond organ, micromoog, biolmellodrone, electric and acoustic violins, bass, mandolin, accordion, piano, rubab, kit percussion and sometimes voice, layered and radically processed in the unique Biota manner. Ther…