Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock.progressive
Titolo: BIOTA

Qualcuno qui li conosce?

 qualcuno li conosce.
Sì,infatti.A me piacciono molto, mio fratello ha tutti gli album e sono
tutti interessanti.Roba davvero originale e molto particolare,arrangiamenti
dissonanti e geniali.

Qualcuno qui li conosce?
How do you make a sound like a distorted animal, mineral, or
vegetable? Accelerate the mutation process. In the Biota studio,
everyday Darwinian evolution just isn't fast enough.
When independent filmmaker Julia Loktev ("Moment of Impact") asked a
Russian art critic about Biota, "he pictured mad scientists encamped
in a fortified recording studio deep in the heart of the desert,
subsisting on hallucinogenic cacti, scheming the musical madness." 
In reality, no hallucinogens are advised. Though Biota's sound
mutation chains DO have a mind of their own, they occasionally need
lucid guidance. 
Biota, a collective of experimental musicians and artists, inhabit
conventionally constructed houses in Denver and the Front Range area
rather than this mythical world. But in the 14 years since its
inception as the Mnemonist Orchestra, the group has developed an
international cult following and an enigmatic aura fed by the fact
that it has performed publicly only twice - most recently at the 1990
New Music America festival in Montreal. The group remains better known
outside the state than within it.
The aggregation consists of multi-instrumentalists Tom Katsimpalis,
Steve Scholbe, Bill Sharp, Gordon Whitlow and Larry Wilson, plus an
indeterminate number of artists and musical collaborators. It
functions primarily as a studio creation, dispersing spurious
radiation on London-based Recommended Records and its won DYS label.
To date, the emissions number 12, including eight LPs, one EP, one
limited-edition cassette and two recent CD-only releases. The
recordings issued since 1985 have come out under the name Biota,
meaning a region's flora and fauna, while those that appeared earlier
were credited to the Mnemonists, defined as persons with particularly
voracious memories. This latter moniker now refers to the visual
component of the group. The Mnemonist artists have produced booklets,
silk-screened posters and artistically manipulated maps of unknown
sites as part of the packages that accompany each release. The artists
often create these works while listening to the music, sketching and
painting the aural worlds as they imagine them. Katsimpalis, who is
involved in both the musical and visual aspects of the process,
sometimes draws during the recording sessions. Like him, the other
musicians derive inspiration from the paintings of Goya, Max Ernst and
Francis Bacon, as well as the films of Nicolas Roeg, Werner Herzog and
David Lynch.
Working in their Fort Collins basement studio, band members sculpt
imaginary spaces and lives - aural worlds swarming with unseen ghosts
of memories past. Walls of percussion shift and shift again, and the
floor squeaks with the grind of a hurdy-gurdy. A Chinese ching and a
ukulele swing from the ceiling, while a sneaky entourage of guitars,
woodwinds and accordions come creeping through the window. Storms of
chaotic noise subside into delicate interludes. Melodic narratives
weave in and out of each other, then disappear, only to rise to haunt
the dens of dissonance again.
The key to these sonic scientists' soundtrack to senility is in the
mix. Using acoustic sources that include a rubab ( a stringed
instrument bought in Tajikistan), a Renaissance krummhorn and a
contraption known as a Marxophone, Biota explores the recording studio
as a musical instrument. Sharp, a founding member of the group,
explains, "We couldn't compose without the studio. unlike most
musicians, who use the studio to document compositions, we're using
products of the studio activity as elements of the composition."
This activity involves an ever-expanding palette of electronic
processing methods that bespeak intimate terms with technology. The
musicians use it as a tool rather than letting it use them, thereby
avoiding the fetishistic trap of technophilia that ensnares many
experimental composers. This approach virtually precludes playing
live. Sharp sums up Biota's conundrum: "To perform on stage, we would
have to somehow condense the process that takes place in the studio
over the course of many months." That would not be an easy feat for a
group that has progressed from manic free-form improvisation to a
highly craftsmanlike way of working, in which each element is
deliberately arranged in an exquisitely ordered structure. But within
that order, there is chaos; the structure is built on a foundation
that is fluidly surreal. tension between the logical and the
instinctive seethes at the core of Biota's musical aesthetic.
In a sense, the group composes films for the ears, luring the listener
through interwoven narratives with textured rhythms and melodies. For
instance, Katsimpalis recalls, "On Bellowing Room (1987, Recommended),
we shared an image of an individual who was within a room that he or
she could not get out of, and could view the world outside the windows
but was still within the parameters of a given space." Similarly, he
says, Gyromancy (1984, DYS) features "a being negotiating precarious
terrain." Biota's most recent project, Almost Never (1992,
Recommended), involves an elaborate story line in which, as
Katsimpalis tells it, "a person or being walked around the outskirts
of a village, came in, than took a road out and then returned." All of
this happened without a word being spoken.
Currently, the group is working on its 13th recording, to be released
on Recommended toward the end of this year. The members are taking a
less programmatic approach than usual to the environmental and
narrative aspects of the composition. But although no specific
parameters have been defined, the group has not completely departed
from the concept of forging abstract, symbolic spaces. Sharp insists
that in spite of growing emphasis on the strictly musical elements,
Biota is still rooted in an intuitive base. "We're still working very
romantically, but we're not being as specific about it," he says.
"We're tending to be more open and try to move through a greater
degree of emotions."
This is where the listener comes in. Biota infuses its recordings with
an array of emotional and psychological clues that force listeners to
take an active, participatory role. Familiar sounds - dogs barking, a
bicycle passing, an inviting instrumental turn - work differently on
each set of ears. "The listeners can invent their own story line using
the clues that are in the mix and their own memories," Sharp advises.
The musicians hope that each witness gleans a different tale from the
mix, drawing on personal recollections and subconscious desires as
they pass through the densely forested Biota.
"Biota has achieved a lot of mystery," Katsimpalis admits. "I think
that's something we as a group enjoy experiencing with the music. Each
time you listen to it, some new part is going to come out. So what the
listeners experience on an emotional and psychological level is
probably going to be different each time because of what they're
bringing to the music. It's almost as if the listener is a magnet, and
that magnetic field is going to be different every time they listen,
and it's going to receive different signals from the music at each
listening."
--
Mauro Moroni
http://www.mellowrecords.com
mor...@pangea.it
in...@mellowrecords.com

 > essenzialmente solo amanti di mainstream prog.
fatemi una descrizione del "mainstream prog" che ho voglia di ridere
napra