Bio

Higher Intelligence Agency was formed by Bobby Bird in 1992, at the same time as he & some fellow electronic music enthusiasts started up the legendary experimental electronic music club, Oscillate in Birmingham. At these early Oscillates, he brought along various bits of kit from his home studio and started to experiment with it in a live setting, mixing in live tracks between vinyl; this was the beginning of the Higher Intelligence Agency.

Soon afterwards Beyond Records emerged, and the first track to be released, Ketamine Entity, appeared on the genre naming ‘Ambient Dub Volume One’ compilation album. This was followed by a single, ‘Speedlearn‘, a track on the groundbreaking Warp compilation ‘Artificial Intelligence 11’,  and a debut album “Colourform“, released on Beyond records in 1993. Over the next couple of years Bobby Bird, assisted by Oscillate DJ Dave Wheels, performed live as HIA throughout europe, while as part of the Oscillate collective, continuing to help promote & develop the burgeoning live electronic music scene with performances by HIA and other leading edge electronic artist’s of the day at the Oscillate club in Birmingham.

In 1995 a second album ‘Freefloater‘ was released, & Bobby collaborated with Geir Jennsen of Biosphere to produce the live album “Polar Sequences”. Over the following years further collaborative album’s were released : in 1996 ‘Higher Intelligence Agency Meets Deep Space Network’ (Bird/Wheels/Moufang/Grossman), in ’97 and ’99  two albums ‘S.H.A.D.O. 1 & S.H.A.D.O. 2 (Bobby Bird/Pete Namlook) on FAX Records, and in 97 Bobby started his own label Headphone , releasing his second collaboration with Biosphere ‘Birmingham Frequencies’ in ’98, and a collaborative album , under the name  System Error -‘Nothing’.

In 2021 he released a new EP ‘Discatron’ , and in 2022 ‘Song of the Machine‘

Bobby continues to play  live dates as Higher Intelligence Agency, with recent  appearances at Festivals including Terraforma Italy, Inner Varnika  Australia, Rural Japan, O.Z.O.R.A.  Hungary, Houghton U.K. , Dekmantel  Amsterdam, as well as a selection of underground club nights

He has also created site specific Multi- Speaker Sound Installations