+++
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.