Biosphere

The project Biosphere was launched in 1991 with Fairy Tale and soon monopolized his attention. The instrumental album Microgravity (Origo, 1991) lifted ambient house to another degree. A sense of surreal calm pervades Baby Satellite, with its sensual African polyrhythmic carpet and a gentle electronic breeze, the eight-minute Tranquilizer, a looping cosmic carillon over a steady beat, and Baby Interphase, a sophisticated interplay of independent electronic strains over an almost Brazilian fast-paced rhythm. The album wakes up with The Fairy Tale, five minutes of loud techno propulsion, and with the tribal jungle beat of Cygnus A. A major detour is represented by the sinister soundsculpting of Biosphere and Cloudwalker II, neither danceable but both worthy of Brian Eno in his bleakest moments. The sampled vocals are more of a distraction than an attraction, though. And they will sound dated in a few years.

Patashnik (Origo, 1994), with SETI Project and the relentless Novelty Waves, recycled the same idea of ambient house.

Jenssen also recorded a collaboration with Pete Namlook, The Fires Of Ork (Fax, 1994), whose second part was released in 2000.

The success of his techno hit did not turn Jenssen into a techno star. The following pair of albums reflected the more experimental aspects of his work: brief electronic vignettes on the movie soundtrack Insomnia (Origo, 1997), lengthy ambient trances on Substrata (All Saints, 1997 - Touch, 2001), that would be reissued with the 1996 soundtrack to The Man With The Movie Camera (Touch, 2000).

Substrata best epitomized Jenssen's "arctic sound", the rhythm-less soundpaintings set in an icy wasteland of sonic bliss, basically a return to Brian Eno's original ambient tenet. Chukhung filters natural sounds and exotic instruments to achieve a concerto of reverbed clangors. Otherworldly voices and natural sounds rise out of shapeless reverbs in its alter-ego, Antennaria. Sinister noises keep The Things I Tell You open-ended, like a fresco in progress, and bestow on Hyperborea the cinematic quality of an alien video. The cosmic fluctuations of Sphere of No-Form display the tragic weltanschauung of Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht. With Silene an ominous vibration advances into the galactic peace The album exuded a stately elegance far removed from the hedonism of ambient house.
Sampled vocals are used less than in previous albums, but they are no less annoying.

The single Endurium/ The Eye Of The Cyclone (1998) was basically an extension of Substrata (they were included in the Japanese edition of the album).

A parallel activity by Biosphere was to conduct live concerts in scenic locations. Both Polar Sequences (1996) and Birmingham Frequencies (Headphone, 2000) documented live exhibitions with British composer Bobby Bird of Higher Intelligence Agency.

Other projects included a remix album of Arne Nordheim's music, Nordheim Transformed (1998), and Biosystems (1999), Biosphere's remixes of other musicians tracks.

Finally, Cirque (Touch, 2000) marked the return of Biosphere to its trademark "arctic" sound. The "ice-age techno" of Nook And Cranny is to techno what Kraftwerk was to disco-music: a wasteland looking for feelings. A new degree of subtlety emerges from pieces built out of nothing, such as Le Grand Dome (swamp-evoking African percussions) and Black Lamb And Grey Falcon (a loop of one guitar note and a little electronic oscillation). Even more sophisticated are the jazzy ambient-house of Iberia Eterea and the fusion of drum'n'bass and dub that materializes in Algae & Fungi. Biosphere was still projecting the same extraterrestrial shadow on ambient-dance music.

Biosphere's Shenzhou (Touch, 2002) marked Geir Jenssen's adoption of the "glitch" aesthetics. Biosphere's "arctic ambient" music (that always managed to sound both lyrical and stark, fluent and hermetic) is augmented with a process of random "remixing" of a sound source (in this case old crackling records of Debussy music). Everything is subdued, from the distorted loops of Shenzhou to the mournful drones of Spindrift to the tribal beat Ancient Campfire to the high-pitched whistle of Heat Leak to the elongated clangors of Gravity Assist. The undercurrent of Debussy music is barely audible. The process is disorienting but the elements that make it disorienting act like ghosts or thieves. A few pieces are just Debussy remixes (Two Ocean Plateau, Fast Atoms Escape, Green Reflections): Jenssen brings out all the pathos of Debussy's music from their stronger orchestral accents.
Like in all Biosphere albums, the filigree of the sound is fragile, thin, evanescent. Jenssen has never believed in lush arrangements, in crowded textures, in overwhelming stylistic statements. He paid a price for this, often sounding "dated" in an age in which many of his discoveries were becoming mass commodities.

Geir Jenssen focused on the beat for Biosphere's nine-movement suite Autour De La Lune (Touch, 2004), another example of ambient minimal "musique concrete" built from electronics and snippets of found sounds.

The percussion loops on Dropsonde (Touch, 2005) added a jazzy touch to Jenssen 's electronica, which was hardly "ambient" anymore, evolving towards a more "constructed" and less "abstract" style.

Cho Oyu 8201m (Ash International, 2006), credited to Jenssen himself, collects field Recordings from Tibet.

Wireless Live (Touch, 2009) is a live album from Biosphere.

More regular beats fueled N-Plants (Touch, 2011).