Biosphere

Artist: Biosphere & Deathprod
P: 2015
These two heavyweights of Norwegian electronics have in fact been paired together on disc once before. That album found both Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere) and Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) remixing various compositions of Arne Nordheim - the pioneering electronic composer of Norway from the '60s. Stator, like the Nordheim remix project, is NOT a collaboration, but a split release that alternates between the two. We definitely get the sense that Jenssen is hedging his sound towards that of Sten, as this album harbors a considerable bleakness within the radiant black drones that's far more fitting of the Deathprod catalogue than that of Biosphere. Deathprod's recorded work is very much a rare commodity, with his four albums that were released collectively on a boxset through Rune Grammofon for his epic black ambience and elegantly dark moodscaping. Outside of the boxset and that remix project (both of which are long out of print), there's very little else, making any new Deathprod material very welcome, indeed. As we mentioned, the album alternates between the Biosphere and the Deathprod material, with the Deathprod tracks sprawled as expanses of cold drone and Morton Feldman-like electronic compositions of tone, color, and pace. The Biosphere tracks are equally as impressive, as shivering, radiophonic works of tremolo'd ambient glimmering upon deep dark rumbles and the occasional step-sequenced ruminations that act as ghostly distillations of his once and former techno past. So so good!

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2004
Fourth Biosphere release on Touch. "Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, six albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.
Says Jenssen on his latest commission:
'Radio France Culture contacted me some time ago and proposed a commission that was to be premiered at the Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier. I was granted access to Radio France's archives and given permission to use this vast source of audio material. I settled on this early 60s dramatization of Jules Verne's De la Terre ˆ la Lune that totally captivated me. The story is quite amazing -- Verne wrote it in the nineteenth century; still he managed to describe a manned space flight in such detail one is stunned. In De la Terre ˆ la Lune Verne describes a space mission that sees the astronauts launched from Florida and returning from space to land in the Pacific Ocean -- exactly the same procedure that the US space program would follow many, many years later. I have sampled bits and pieces of the dramatization's dialogue, coupled it with sounds recorded at the MIR space station and then incorporated it with my own compositions.'
Following the original broadcast, Jenssen continued to work on the recording which now sees the light of day as Autour de la Lune, a 74 minute symphony made up of nine 'movements'.
The propulsive opening sequence 'translation' gives way to the cross talk and scrambled communications of 'rotation' and 'modifi', before the listener is enveloped in a dense and seemingly endless space (the sound of zero gravity?).
The circular flight of Autour de la Lune is Biosphere at his most expansive. Featuring a specially-commissioned painting by Tor-Magnus Lundeby, one of Norway's most prominent visual artists, this new release is set to compete with Brian Eno's 'Apollo' recordings as the definitive homage to the space age."

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: 2016
Departed Glories is an exquisite collection of pieces -- short, deliberate and wafting from the utterly diaphanous to the strictly concrete. as almost always there is a spareness to the constructs that, by their very structure, materialize as unrelentingly compelling while seeming, apparently, simple. the technique, in some places, is little more than alternating between clustered events while in others gradually interleaving those events which, when once heard separately are completely transformed when layered. distinct here too is an effective and affecting use of female voice, direct and processed.

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

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1994
This is actually a CD considered a classic in Norway. I believe it's actually one of the best ambient albums ever released. Biosphere sampled a lot of the sounds from the Northern Light Observatory in Tromsoe, Norway and used them making these great chill-out songs. The CD has an overall spacey feeling and when you listen to it, it makes you feel like your floating around in space.
Sample sources:
Track 1 - "We had a dream last night; we had the same dream" from the movie 'The Krays'.
Track 2 - "So, you're really into this space stuff...?" from the movie 'Space Camp'.
Track 3 - "...so frightening to lose yourself..." from the movie 'Scanners'.
Track 5 - Russian speech from the movie '2010'
Track 7 - "Will I dream?" / "What do you mean?" from the movie '2010' again.
Track 8 - "Can you imagine, an extraterrestrial disc jockey..?" from the movie 'Space Camp' again.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1994
This is actually a CD considered a classic in Norway. I believe it's actually one of the best ambient albums ever released. Biosphere sampled a lot of the sounds from the Northern Light Observatory in Tromsoe, Norway and used them making these great chill-out songs. The CD has an overall spacey feeling and when you listen to it, it makes you feel like your floating around in space.
Sample sources:
Track 1 - "We had a dream last night; we had the same dream" from the movie 'The Krays'.
Track 2 - "So, you're really into this space stuff...?" from the movie 'Space Camp'.
Track 3 - "...so frightening to lose yourself..." from the movie 'Scanners'.
Track 5 - Russian speech from the movie '2010'
Track 7 - "Will I dream?" / "What do you mean?" from the movie '2010' again.
Track 8 - "Can you imagine, an extraterrestrial disc jockey..?" from the movie 'Space Camp' again.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2019
The Petrified Forest mini-album is inspired by the movie of the same name, released in 1936 and directed by Archie Mayo. Alan Squier, a failed, world-weary British writer, hikes into an isolated, weather-beaten desert diner in Arizona owned by Jason Marple. Jason's daughter, Gabrielle is immediately taken with the disillusioned intellectual, since they share idealistic dreams of escaping the stark reality of their lives.
The music sounds a lot like Boards of Canada or some Ulrich Schnauss works.

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2019
The Senja Recordings is a collection of various outdoor recordings and studio improvisations recorded on the island of Senja, Arctic Norway, between 2015 and 2018.
Boomkat: "Geir Jenssen yields a most Biosphere of Biosphere recordings with this new album recorded on a Norwegian island within the arctic circle
Leading on from recent years’ ‘Departed Glories’ and ‘Petrified Forest’, the 66 minute long and 17-track wide suite of ‘The Senja Recordings’ arguably amounts to the most significant Biosphere outing of this decade. Taking its title from Norway’s 2nd largest island, where it was conceived, the album features outdoor sounds and improvisations made during Jenssen’s stays between 2015-2018 and finds the artist more porous than ever to distorted, granular textures along with his trademark palette of elemental electronics. It’s essentially the artist getting closer than ever to his surroundings and cutting down the space between there and your ears.
From the sounds of it, one can only imagine Jenssen had a quietly blissful time making this record. There’s the expected darkness for sure, but it always resolves with strong pangs of isolationist melody, cropping up Conet Project-like in ’Strandby’; glowing like a dawn aurora behind a granite cliff in ‘Berg’; or harmonising with the birds and air in ‘Fjølhøgget’ and the Aeolian harp-like tones of his ‘Bergsbotn’ trio, so named after the small village facing out to harsh North Atlantic. factor in the natural yet unearthly sounds picked up by his hydrophone in ’Skålbrekka’, and the gloaming solitude of his sublime closer ‘Hå’, and you have a top class Biosphere album, if you like this sort of thing." 

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2002
With Shenzhou, Geir Jenssen has crafted him most refined ambient work to date. It's been a long journey for Jenssen, from the chamber pop of Bel Canto, through Bleep's house music, then spaceward to the ambient techno of his first two Biosphere releases. Don't expect a return to the beat-driven territory of Patashnik; Shenzhou continues in the purely ambient vein of Biosphere's previous two albums for the avant garde Touch Label, although it is neither as overtly pretty as Substrata, nor as earthbound and naturalistic as Cirque. Shenzhou, named after a Chinese spacecraft, is a subtle work continuing Jenssen's tradition of simultaneously evoking deep space's stillness and the icy expanse of his Norwegian home.
Ten of Shenzhou's twelve tracks are based on the orchestral works of French composer Claude Debussy. Jenssen's choice of source material seems almost serendipitous given that Debussy (along with close friend Erik Satie) is considered by many to be the father of modern composition.By rejecting the dominant classical forms of the late nineteenth century, Debussy pioneered a music of impressionistic atmospheres and textures that helped clear the way for contemporary ambient music. And like Jenssen today, Debussy's compositions took inspiration from nature, be it water ("La Mer") or space ("Claire de Lune").
Unlike Wendy Carlos's Switched On Bach or William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style, Jenssen eschews simply creating synthesizer arrangements for the existing scores. Instead, he loops small samples of Debussy performances, then uses the treated loops as a framework onto which he carefully grafts and weaves his electronic ambience. Rather than a clumsy collision of styles, the results sound perfectly balanced and natural, with the orchestral and electronic elements blending into a new form; the resulting texture brings to mind a less dense version of Wolfgang Voight's Gas project, but without the beats. And while taken individually, each of Shenzhou's tracks may sound simple and slight, the album builds an enveloping atmosphere when listened to as a suite. By absorbing elements from ambient music's past, Jenssen has nudged the genre a bit further into its future.

2002. © The Robot

Artist: Biosphere
P: 1997
Substrata opens with the spacious eco-industrial thrum of As The Sun Kissed The Horizon (1:47), which becomes the ethereal melancholia of Poa Alpina. In these 11 pieces, a variety of haunting moods and styles (generally of vaporous, cyclical natures) are presented... from the gentle, strummy Times When I Know You'll Be Sad which becomes the electro-bio-mechanical slur of Hyperborea, to Kobresia's muttered Russian voice and symphonic string passages, to the elegantly cinematic swell of Antennaria.
 

Artist: Biosphere
P: 2001
Not a sequel, but an expansion into a "2"; Biosphere's classic Substrata has been re-released, repackaged and broadened with the inclusion of a second disc, Man With a Movie Camera which includes a "new" soundtrack to a 1929 Russian film with Geir Jenssen (Biosphere) and Per Martinsen (Mental Overdrive) alternating turns. If that's not enough, there are also two additional released-only-in-Japan Substrata tracks.
Substrata opens with the spacious eco-industrial thrum of As The Sun Kissed The Horizon (1:47), which becomes the ethereal melancholia of Poa Alpina. In these 11 pieces, a variety of haunting moods and styles (generally of vaporous, cyclical natures) are presented... from the gentle, strummy Times When I Know You'll Be Sad which becomes the electro-bio-mechanical slur of Hyperborea, to Kobresia's muttered Russian voice and symphonic string passages, to the elegantly cinematic swell of Antennaria.
A scratchy old dialogue (apparently from the very early days of recording) serves as the Prologue (0:19) to the seven parts of Man With a Movie Camera; applicably, many of these pieces seem to be sepia-tinted and haunted by forgotten ghosts.
Dappled with windchime clatter, the low tonal pulses of The Silent Orchestra recede into the distance. Spoken/whispered (English) words are tossed into the hypnotic emanations.
A dark and moody City Wakes Up to brooding bass ripples and whispery ephemeral cymbals.
In Freeze-Frames, something like slow-motion helicopter blades meets with old-time songs, barge wails and antique machinery perhaps. Other scenes of these soundtrack include sonic occurrences such as watery flows, faraway baroque music, buzzy electrons, spooky piano, rumbling drones and radar-like blips.
The final two tracks are from the Japanese release of Substrata; amid gray breezes, The Eye of the Cyclone opens on an uncharacteristically-bouncy Icelandic style which gives way to a dancier (and lengthier) electronic theme.
Natural soundscenes are overtaken by the trancey waves and soft beats of Endurium (10:47).