Higher Intelligency Agency

Any other fans? I just love that early-mid ambient-y acid-y sound that would sit at home along side the original Artificial Intelligence compilations. A bit more lively than Global Communication but not thaaaaaaat much happening, just bringing you back to the chill out room of some rave somewhere. I still need to check out their albums with Pete Namlook and other collabos.
 

Die hard fan right here. The collabs with Biosphere and Namlook are ESSENTIAL. 
 

Track down the remixes, one offs, etc. I also regularly spin his live at Oscillate set on the reg.

Never heard of them until a few years ago I took a vinyl copy of "the Speedlearn" in london and I really enjoy it. Only listened a couple of times but has great tunes, seems a mix of Orbital and Vapourspace.

Regards,

The nostalgia is super effective!

I was mad into colourform as a kid. It's reminded me that I was basically into anything with intelligence in the title. Artificial intelligence series, intelligence records, HIA.... Reading Mondo 2000 and wired about smart drugs and VR. It all seems kinda punk now, like the last attempt ofsome youth culture that was about dumbing down or something. Maybe I was just a geek tho.

Future sound of London too. There was a definite optimism about the future. Dunno if I'm just old now but it all seems bleak. The techno rebels have been crushed by capitalism.

Edit: like I think we always thought it would be bleak but that we could carve out our own future. 

...instead its all gone a bit more matrix than we ever expected, only rather than robots it's capitalist distraction. Again tho maybe that was always there and I'm just old an cynical now.

Have Colourform on CD and vinyl, plus the remix disc.  

  On 12/18/2019 at 9:52 AM, donquixote said:

...instead its all gone a bit more matrix than we ever expected, only rather than robots it's capitalist distraction. Again tho maybe that was always there and I'm just old an cynical now.

Or rather, you were young and naive back then. And nostalgic about those days now. 

  On 12/18/2019 at 9:24 AM, donquixote said:

I was mad into colourform as a kid. It's reminded me that I was basically into anything with intelligence in the title. Artificial intelligence series, intelligence records, HIA.... Reading Mondo 2000 and wired about smart drugs and VR. It all seems kinda punk now, like the last attempt ofsome youth culture that was about dumbing down or something. Maybe I was just a geek tho.

The way I saw it myself was that the early 90s "intelligent" counter culture (is there some good name for it? I only know zippie) was a kind of rebellion against the 80s macho and dumb rock culture, the hedonism of mainstream dance clubs and the nihilism of the punk rock. But in the end I think that it was more surface than actual content.

The scene seems to have split up around the mid-90s, like the rest of the electronic scene which went through a rapid balkanization. The trend setters moved to the next thing hot thing. The more psychedically minded acts merged with the emerging psytrance scene. The more abstract minded moved on to the IDM scene. And ambient artists went back creating soundscapes in their bedrooms instead of playing in the chill-out rooms after raves.

I remember reading parts of the Rushkoff's Cyberia a few years ago and thinking well this is a bit dumb. It used to be online for free but can't find it now. Anyway, Hyperreal is still online..

Maybe it was that when the internet went mainstream and corporate it wasn't the utopia that they thought it would be. People didn't go online to learn about quantum physics or artificial intelligence but talk about the same things they talk in real life and watch cat videos. VR never really took off. People didn't take drugs to become enlightened and hyper intelligent but to get wasted and escape the daily life. And electronic music was just mostly nice to dance to even when it sounds weirdly futuristic.

If you want to see some techno-optimism there are still at least the transhumanists..

  On 12/20/2019 at 8:49 AM, zkom said:

If you want to see some techno-optimism there are still at least the transhumanists..

Yeah, I'm down with the anarchist side of the transhumanist movement. The mainstream capitalist one is... more than a little unnerving for my liking. "Zippie" makes me think of Zippy the Pinhead by Bill Griffith. "YOW!" "Are we having fun yet?"

And when I hear "cyberhippie" or "technohippie" I think of cyberdelia and yeah, Mondo 2000 magazine (I'd like to try to find some PDFs of that) this quote from Timothy Leary, "PC is the new LSD".

Ambient House

Colourform was the gateway drug for me, and I still enjoy it regularly. Absolute classic. Great range of feels from warm rave afterglow to creeping sci-fi paranoia. Definitely rooted in that early-90s ambient sound, but hasn't aged awfully. And I still use Conoid Tone as a speaker frequency range test track.

Of course I remember these guys. Remember listening to them on John Peel.