Biosphere

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2000 / 2007
Biosphere is Geir Jensen, a unique techno artist who is spearheading Norway's current improv/electroacoustic/electronica revolution - a revolution that makes it the most interesting musical country on the planet right now. `Cirque' is the best of four groundbreaking Biosphere records. Like Autechre's, this is a deliberately, expressively distressed music. Precision structures billow at you numbed by Arctic cold which blurs and quietens them. The pieces are like geometric ice formations muffled by snowdrifts. Bass tracks boom like hidden substrata; melodies emerge anaesthetised. There's a sense of longed-for warmth and comfort. Like Polar weather, sunlight briefly appears, and just as suddenly disappears, in `Too Fragile to Walk On'. Mossy lifeforms bloom in `Nook and Cranny' before the music darkens again. The Biosphere aesthetic is unique and completely original, like Tarkovsky in sound, inducing nostalgia, a need to return to something lost, but which can never be found: in `Black Lamb and Grey Falcon', Sinatra goes for another take, only to find the chords the pianist is hitting keep transmuting into glacial electroacoustics. `Cirque' is a major achievement in techno; 2000's best, most original release in the genre. It has a commercial, softly beat-driven sheen, but behind this, the material is as distantly silent, awesome and elemental as an avalanche; and as endlessly fascinating. Essential.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2000
Biosphere is Geir Jensen, a unique techno artist who is spearheading Norway's current improv/electroacoustic/electronica revolution - a revolution that makes it the most interesting musical country on the planet right now. `Cirque' is the best of four groundbreaking Biosphere records. Like Autechre's, this is a deliberately, expressively distressed music. Precision structures billow at you numbed by Arctic cold which blurs and quietens them. The pieces are like geometric ice formations muffled by snowdrifts. Bass tracks boom like hidden substrata; melodies emerge anaesthetised. There's a sense of longed-for warmth and comfort. Like Polar weather, sunlight briefly appears, and just as suddenly disappears, in `Too Fragile to Walk On'. Mossy lifeforms bloom in `Nook and Cranny' before the music darkens again. The Biosphere aesthetic is unique and completely original, like Tarkovsky in sound, inducing nostalgia, a need to return to something lost, but which can never be found: in `Black Lamb and Grey Falcon', Sinatra goes for another take, only to find the chords the pianist is hitting keep transmuting into glacial electroacoustics. `Cirque' is a major achievement in techno; 2000's best, most original release in the genre. It has a commercial, softly beat-driven sheen, but behind this, the material is as distantly silent, awesome and elemental as an avalanche; and as endlessly fascinating. Essential.

Here the last copy of the original first version on the Touch label.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2000 / 2016
Cirque - originally released in 2000 - was Biosphere´s first album for the UK label Touch. This new re-issue comes with a 6-track bonus album and new artwork.

Mojo (UK): Fourth full album from ambient pioneer. Coming to prominence with 1992's Microgravity - which along with the first couple of Aphex/Polygon Window CDs, defined the genre ambient - Geir Jenssen as Biosphere has made three of the '90s' best albums, culminating with last year's near beatless Substrata. The idea - as it always was thanks to Eno's On Land - is music as environment (reflecting, creating): working from his base in Tromso, Arctic Norway, Jenssen offers a polar, Apollonian exploration of the human psyche. Cirque is a perfectly constructed 47-minute sequence: cold clarity up against real depth of field, synth cycles dissolving into sudden moments of sonic revelation that sound like a waking dream - try the first 20 seconds of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. (And if you think that's pretentious - your loss). Inspired by the story of a young American, Chris McCandless, who walked alone into the Alaskan wilderness and perished, Cirque balances the tightrope between warmth and unease, resolving into a moon melody that leaves you a peace. What a good record! [Jon Savage].
Biosphere is Geir Jensen, a unique techno artist who is spearheading Norway's current improv/electroacoustic/electronica revolution - a revolution that makes it the most interesting musical country on the planet right now. `Cirque' is the best of four groundbreaking Biosphere records. Like Autechre's, this is a deliberately, expressively distressed music. Precision structures billow at you numbed by Arctic cold which blurs and quietens them. The pieces are like geometric ice formations muffled by snowdrifts. Bass tracks boom like hidden substrata; melodies emerge anaesthetised. There's a sense of longed-for warmth and comfort. Like Polar weather, sunlight briefly appears, and just as suddenly disappears, in `Too Fragile to Walk On'. Mossy lifeforms bloom in `Nook and Cranny' before the music darkens again. The Biosphere aesthetic is unique and completely original, like Tarkovsky in sound, inducing nostalgia, a need to return to something lost, but which can never be found: in `Black Lamb and Grey Falcon', Sinatra goes for another take, only to find the chords the pianist is hitting keep transmuting into glacial electroacoustics. `Cirque' is a major achievement in techno; 2000's best, most original release in the genre. It has a commercial, softly beat-driven sheen, but behind this, the material is as distantly silent, awesome and elemental as an avalanche; and as endlessly fascinating. Essential.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2006
Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is.
Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper".
Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time." A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio.
The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure. This is Biosphere's 5th release for Touch, after "Cirque", and "Autour de la Lune.. He has also contributed to various Touch compilations, including "Spire - Organ Music, Past, Present & Future", and more recently to the Storr walk on Skye, Scotland, a guided tour through stunning landscape accompanied by illuminations and sound recordings.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1997 / 2007
Soundtrack for Erik Skjoldbjaerg film of the same name.
Urban Sounds, USA: "Insomnia was released at roughly the same time as Geir Jenssen's debut Biosphere recording for All Saints, Substrata. Because of its label's obscurity (the Norwegian Origo Sound), however, it hasn't received half the attention. Shame, since it's a gorgeous album, in line with Jenssen's recent work with Higher Intelligence Agency's Bobby Bird on the collaborative PolarSequences and the more subdued of Substrata's glacial movements. As that implies, you won't find quite the track development here that the best of Jenssen's work is known for (Insomnia is mostly drones, repeating figures, and occasional sparse, non-acoustical percussion). But then take into account that it's a soundtrack recording (for the Erik Skjoldbjaerg film of the same name) presented in vignette form and it should be clear the music is meant to serve a different, less diffuse purpose. Nonetheless, the material -- split into 17 tracks ranging from 1.5 to 5 minutes, with most hanging around the mean -- is uniformly accomplished, and is on the whole an engaging, dynamic listen, even without the reference of the film to fill out its sparse framework. With Substrata and Pulusha's "Isolation," among some of the best (mostly) pure ambient to appear this year.
Mia Kaarinadotter - Vocals
Geir Jenssen - synths, samplings, electronics, composer, producer

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1991 / 2007
"Microgravity" is the first Biosphere CD and it's awesome. The blend between atmospherics and beat is perfect in just about every single track. "Baby Satellite" is danceable and dreamy, and even tracks without much of a beat, like the opening title track, have a movement to them that few other artists can emulate.

Most outstanding is "The Fairy Tale." The opening sample--where does this come from? A radio-voice describing a square full of burning tourists: "Look at them out there, all those little figures dissolving in light. Rather like fairyland, isn't it--except for the smell of gasoline and burning flesh." Chilling! And the song is great, wonderful beat, minimalist melody, beautiful ending.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1991 / 2015
This is the new double CD, with no crossfadings between the tracks like on the 1991 version.
With new additional CD.
"Microgravity" is the first Biosphere CD and it's awesome. The blend between atmospherics and beat is perfect in just about every single track. "Baby Satellite" is danceable and dreamy, and even tracks without much of a beat, like the opening title track, have a movement to them that few other artists can emulate.

Most outstanding is "The Fairy Tale." The opening sample--where does this come from? A radio-voice describing a square full of burning tourists: "Look at them out there, all those little figures dissolving in light. Rather like fairyland, isn't it--except for the smell of gasoline and burning flesh." Chilling! And the song is great, wonderful beat, minimalist melody, beautiful ending.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2011
Minimal Ambient with some slow melodies.
"Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis.
A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said: "the plants were so well designed that 'such a situation is practically impossible'.
The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th I received the following message from a FB friend: "Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear powerplant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future?

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1995
In 1995, Levi Strauss & Co. was searching for a new angle to add to their television advertisement campaign (which up to that point had never featured electronic music), and they decided to use the uptempo track "Novelty Waves" from Patashnik. Shortly thereafter, "Novelty Waves" was released as a single (featuring remixes by various other artists), and managed to chart in several countries, reaching #51 in the United Kingdom

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1994
In 1995, Levi Strauss & Co. was searching for a new angle to add to their television advertisement campaign (which up to that point had never featured electronic music), and they decided to use the uptempo track "Novelty Waves" from Patashnik. Shortly thereafter, "Novelty Waves" was released as a single (featuring remixes by various other artists), and managed to chart in several countries, reaching #51 in the United Kingdom