Customer Reviews

Colourform

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of my favourite holiday/driving CD's. The only ambient/electro music that I've found that's tripped out with balls - none of that blipping about for no reason. Very calming and otherworldly- useful for those early morning come-downs, basically. Top Bananas all round.

The first time I heard the Higher Intelligence Agency was on the "sympathy in chaos2" compilation, with their song "Mainting scan for UFO's". This album is.. well, good, but none of it parallels the beauty of that song, which I assume their other work is more like.

The CD itself is impressive technically, but it seems to lack any flair. Sure, it's cool listening to a whole song evolve from a single percussion loop, but it doesn't matter if the melody is banal. Which is the case with most of the songs here.. though I liked Conoid Tone, Orange and Ketamine Entity especially.

Overall, it's a good CD for those inclined towards ambient electronic music, but its abstractions may frighten away those used to more melodic, mainstream music.

Damn this is a good CD! This is one of the first and best of the "ambient dub" sub-genre of electronic music -- a beautiful, bass-heavy, laid-back set of electronic soundscapes that sound great when you're chilling at home or too stoned to move.

Ambient dub is an offshoot of electronic music that never really dominated the charts anywhere as far as I can tell, but it's a tasty, organic-sounding, and highly agreeable approach to digital music nonetheless. Higher Intelligence Agency piles colourful bloops and bleeps on top of mesmerizing basslines and relaxed beats to excellent effect. This CD is tough to track down, but well worth the effort.

I lucked into this CD from ebay and I am absolutley CRAZY about it. This almost beats my Orb collection. These days, the ORB are not doing much. The genre is slacking but I believe it will regain momentum. There is still fresh material and new artist to stand in the arena.
This CD is spectacular in that while listening I actually feel as if I am floating 3 feet above my bed and I am soaking in a pleasant warm bluishgreen liquid that soothes all tension and smells of the sweetest berries. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Emitting the sweet sounds of "Spectral". Rich, textural, and healing electronica. No one else out there comes close to their sound, orchestration, and depth.

These words appear on a sticker applied to my copy of "Colourform," and I agree completely. In a world of endless, hyped-up and heartless techno, HIA quietly goes about their business of producing some of the most compelling electronic music imaginable. While the majority of so-called electronic music these days relies on mad tempos and pyrotechnics, HIA relies instead on their complete mastery of the synthesizer, their unparalleled production values and their ear for creating beautiful soundscapes. All these tracks are presented mid-tempo, such that each of the countless percussion and synth textures can have their own sonic space. I'm now listening to track 4, "Influx." It starts with a simple but fascinating percussion track. This is quickly joined by a bass-like synth texture and countless other subtle synth textures. It is impossible to describe these textures, since each one is unique and have never been heard before by any human. These textures shift constantly and take the general form of a song, always propelled forward by masterful drum programming. The key to all of this is subtlety. It requires that you actually listen. But this active listening pays off immensely by tranporting the listener to uncharted sonic territory, where he/she can float along blissfully for the duration of the track. HIA are truly "Ambient Wizards."

I bought Colorform in 1998 and it remains one of my favorite albums in the genre. Relaxing, beautiful, thought-provoking sounds that I have only ever heard from HIA - its hard for me not to sound evengelical if you have never heard their work before.

Music is not usually synasthaenic for me, but the opening track sounds like large, brightly coloured lozenges emerging from a darker, coruscating background... Colourform is for me a perfect title to this timeless music - thanks HIA.

I first heard this in 1994 when a friend from the UK gave it to me on tape. Togther with the Drun Clubs "Everything is Now" that tape stayed on continious rotation for most of that year and now in 2004 it is still one of my all time favourite CDs . Its a unique take on the analog synthy, bleepy, aquatic and bubbly school., Rhythms are more pulsatile than percussive. It throbs, washes and breathes. Its roots lie in techno/dub influences so its not "academic" ambient, playable to most anyone whatever their tastes in music.

Very pleasant, ethereal electronica with a beat. Can listen to this stuff for weeks on end without tiring of it.

Ambient Dub fanatics like myself should not give this CD a miss. This album and Freefloater are probably the best two CD's of The Higher Intelligence Agency. However, many people who have given these CD's a less than favorable review are determining that their sound is too repetitious, and in many cases either all sounds too much alike, or the tracks themselves are just not varying enough with the track. I can see how some people can come to this conclusion. If you don't have a lot of music like this, than it just seems that you are playing this CD too much and letting yourself get bored with it too quickly. Even I don't care to sit through the entire playback of just the one CD. But, I have determined that this music from HIA should be played within a mix of other Ambient Dub and other various glitch and IDM related electronica. To just play these 9 songs end to end can get dull quickly. But if you listen to these songs mixed in with about another hundred IDM instrumentals than you will truly appreciate HIA's participation in the overall bigger picture of today's electronic instrumentals.

I have these two HIA CD's shuffling in my 200 CD carrousel. These tracks by HIA are being mixed up with tracks by Autechre, Gescom, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Pete Namlook, Biosphere, The Orb, Phutureprimitive, Sounds From the Ground, Electric Skychurch, Plaid, Boards of Canada, and various other similar artists of which The Higher Intelligence Agency belongs with.

I also have these songs and other IDM and Ambient Dub tracks burned onto ATRAC CDR's that is made through the SonicStage program made available only by Sony. (Check out some of Sony's ATRAC CD players and find out why burning hours of your favorite tunes onto a single CDR is better than just loading an ipod with mp3s) Burning hard copies is definitely better than just floating your music in a temporary storage unit like an ipod. (You can make 32 hour CDR's, and as many as you want from all your CD's and mp3s. How many songs can you single ipod hold?)

Anyway, Kudos to you for discovering The Higher Intelligence Agency, but now, explore some of the other artists I've mentioned above. You will love this new world of sound that you've discovered. It is more vast than you could ever imagine.