BITOI (Bass is the original instrument) is a bass-voice hybrid. The Swedish-Danish ensemble features award-winning composer, electric bass player, and producer Cassius Lambert, alongside a choir.

The group performs in a quartet format with Cassius Lambert  on bass and three vocalists, chosen from a rotating lineup: Alexandra Shabo,, Lise Kroner,, Anja Tietze Lahrmann, Ella Cronberg, and Lydia Cronberg.
Their name—Bass Is The Original Instrument—nods to Joan La Barbara’s 1976 record Voice Is The Original Instrument, mirroring Cassius’s exploration of the bass as the “first” instrument, in dialogue with the original: the voice.

However small, BITOI crafts a lush timbre: full-bodied yet agile. With piercing clarity, the female trio interlock bite and softness in a firm grip. They “sing with equal power and precision, in evocative voices—devotional, as in an ancient choir” (Sydsvenskan), delivering a “genuinely soul-cleansing performance” (Crack Magazine). For lyrics, they use phonetically transcribed bird songs, evoking “a folkloric sound as timeless as it is utterly unfamiliar” (The Wire).

Born as a commission from Inkonst, the project premiered at Intonal 2023. Since then, they have performed at festivals such as Roskilde, Le Guess Who?, Rewire, Clandestino, Spot, Paesaggi Sonori, Stanser Musiktage, and Babel XP, reaching audiences in more than ten countries within two years.
They released their debut EP – O – in 2023 on Kaprifol Records, followed by their first full-length album Sirikulu in 2025 on Supertraditional Records. Along the way, they were named Newcomer of the Year at both Folk och Världsmusikgalan and DMA Roots, and toured Japan, collaborating with Okinawan musician Aragaki Mutsumi.

BITOI embodies Cassius’s miximalism, a way of flipping minimalism on its head: instead of stripping things down to bare bones, Cassius packs maximum detail and expression into a minimal framework. It’s about carving gold out of every tiny sound, layering complexity in a sparse setup. With BITOI, this means lush choral textures and quarter-tone twists balanced on the lean structure of bass and voice alone—no drums, no excess—just focused, hyper-detailed sound that feels both intimate and grand. A finely tuned play of extended vocal techniques, polyrhythms, and prepared textures—minimalism pushed to its richest edge.

*in collaboration with Wakeupandream

The three women’s voices are unreal, gliding together in an alien harmony, trilling and tapping their throats to achieve a warbling effect. Singing in this ancient avian language, transposed for human ears, BITOI evokes a folkloric sound as timeless as it is utterly unfamiliar.”

– The Wire