From 31f7cf3bbe53cc285d7074562e1ee23c20519722 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Wolfgang Müller
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2022 18:24:58 +0200
Subject: content: Add post: "Thoughts on: Biosphere's Microgravity, Substrata"

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+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.
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