Summary.
Norway's multi-instrumentalist Geir Jenssen (ex-Bel Canto), who had pioneered ambient house with Bleep's North Pole By Submarine (1990), produced one of the most lyrical albums of ambient house, Microgravity (1991), credited to his new project, Biosphere. And that project evolved towards a rhythm-less "arctic sound", set in a icy wasteland of sonic bliss, with Polar Sequences (1996) and especially Substrata (1997).
Full bio.
Norwegian keyboardist Geir Jenssen quit Bel Canto
almost immediately in order to devote himself to his solo projects.
E-man, that had already released the cassette E-man (Likvider, 1984),
debuted on vinyl with the single Change This Circus.
Bleep released the singles Sure Be Glad When You're Dead,
In Your System, A Byte Of AMC,
Launch Pad and the album North Pole By Submarine (SSR, 1990),
one of the earliest specimen of ambient house.
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).