Biosphere "Substrata / Man With a Movie Camera" Touch TO:50 2001
cd1 Substrata (58:26)
As the Sea Kissed the Horizon (1:47)
Poa Alpina (4:11)
Chukhung (7:34)
The
Things I Tell You (6:28)
Times When I Know You'll Be Sad (3:44)
Hyperborea (5:45)
Kobresia
(7:12)
Antennaria (5:04)
Uva--Ursi (3:01)
Sphere of No--Form (5:47)
Silene (7:53)
cd2 Man With a Movie Camera (53:34)
Prologue (:19)
The Silent Orchestra (7:52)
City Wakes Up (5:58)
Freeze--Frames (6:46)
Manicure (4:43)
The Club (1:57)
Ballerina
(7:50)
The Eye of the Cyclone (7:22)
Endurium (10:47)
Geir Jenssen's 1997 Biosphere album has been remastered and nicely re-packaged with a bonus disc for Touch. Disc 1 is "Substrata" proper and disc 2 is a new, previously unreleased, commissioned soundtrack for the 1929 Russian film "Man with a Movie Camera", plus the 2 beat infused bonus tracks from the Japanese edition of the album. Both discs, nearly an hour apiece, offer a continuous, deep ambient jigsaw puzzle - disc 2 being the noisier with a more urban/industrial aura. We slowly, willingly drift along through chilled out spaces and cityscapes, natural hums and environmental residues, electronic pads and blips, the clutter of metals and trinkets, disembodied voices and appropriated musical passages, synth strings and plucked/strummed strings ("Kobresia" in particular settles into a beautiful stringed stasis), softly malleted tones and some subtle rhythmic pulsations. Very soothing, very calming, very Arctic. Jenssen's reclusive Norwegian locale undoubtedly influences the vast, dark and cold nature of his music. But what's surprising to me is how emotionally cold much of it also seems despite it's surface beauty ... a sort of depressing, lonely void. That feeling overwhelms me here at times, but sometimes you want to feel that way, know what I mean?
Where did I get this cd? - mail order via Forced Exposure.