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diff --git a/content/18/index.md b/content/18/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad03a9b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/18/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ ++++ +date = 2022-04-09T18:24:20+02:00 +title = "Thoughts on: Biosphere's Microgravity, Substrata" + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["music"] ++++ + +{{ img(path="microgravity.jpg", alt="Cover art for Microgravity", float="right", +width=230, caption="Microgravity", link="https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/microgravity-reissue-with-bonus-album") }} + +**Biosphere**, Geir Jenssen's moniker, is one you often see featured in various +ambient music best-of lists. For some reason it has taken me until this last +month to finally check out his early (and most well-regarded) work, prompted by +a recommendation on Spotify of all places. + +Beginning with 1991's +[_Microgravity_](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/microgravity-reissue-with-bonus-album) +I was quite surprised to find a more beat- and loop-heavy album. Jenssen +interweaves simple and repetitive melodies with bass-heavy backing and unique +samples from nature and science-fiction. The titular first track _Microgravity_, +for example, pits a ringing phone against an icy howling wind, all whilst +accompanied by a deep bass track that contrasts rather cold and industrial +instrumentation. + +_Baby Satellite_ and _Tranquilizer_ pick up the pace a bit and get a bit more +sample-heavy, the latter containing a lovely vocal sample from [Space: +1999](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999). Listening to the album I +couldn't help being reminded of [**Woob**](https://woob.bandcamp.com/)'s early +albums as **Journeyman**, _Mama 6_ and _National Hijinx_, which are similarly +heavy on samples from pop fiction. + +The album's penultimate track _Baby Interphase_ is probably my favourite one off +of the original album. Its use of klaxons and the sound of what I can only +describe as a "science-fiction beacon" in the main mix are refreshingly silly, +whilst the rest of the instrumentation has a great space-y and floaty feel. + +The album as linked above contains a second CD with unreleased tracks from the +era, and those are not to be missed. Especially the upbeat _Search_ with its +unrelenting repetition of a vocal sample and _Dewy Fields_ with its haunting +trumpet-like cries. + +{{ img(path="substrata.jpg", alt="Cover art for Substrata", float="left", +width=230, caption="Substrata", link="https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/substrata") }} + +Jenssen's third studio album, +[_Substrata_](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/substrata), was released in +1997. This is the first genuinely ambient album by **Biosphere** and one that +usually ends up on best-of lists. + +Right off the bat I do not have trouble seeing why. _As the Sun Kissed the +Horizon_ opens the album with field recordings of a far-away airplane contrasted +against the frolicking of children in the background. It then seamlessly fades +into the ambient tour de force which is _Poa Alpina_, an achingly beautiful +composition of strums and thick almost foglike drone. Ended by sounds of +downpour the track dissolves into _Chukhung_, a more alien and inquisitive +experience that has a main sample endlessly rotate around the listener's ears, +as if searching for someone. + +Vocal samples are present again as well, with _The Things I Tell You_ containing +an excerpt from The Giant's speech in Season 2 of Twin Peaks and _Hyperborea_ +featuring Major Briggs from the same episode talking to his son, Bobby. +_Kobresia_ samples a radio broadcast of a documentary about Karl Nikolaev, a +purported telepath trying to guess the nature of an item lying two floors away. + +The album ends with _Silene_, an eerie and strangely nostalgic track that +reminded me a bit of **The Caretaker**'s _An Empty Bliss Beyond This World_. +There's lots to love in this album, but I personally keep coming back to _Poa +Alpina_ as my favourite. I just can't get enough of how painfully lonely it +feels. diff --git a/content/18/microgravity.jpg b/content/18/microgravity.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd8e93c --- /dev/null +++ b/content/18/microgravity.jpg diff --git a/content/18/substrata.jpg b/content/18/substrata.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2e67afc --- /dev/null +++ b/content/18/substrata.jpg |
