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Biosphere Deathprod, "Stator"
If this album was a true collaboration and had come out a decade ago, I probably would have pre-ordered it months in advance and excitedly camped out in front of my mailbox waiting for it to arrive.  Sadly, it is not (it is a split) and it did not, though Stator is still an admirably solid album.  Also, any fresh dispatch from Helge Sten's Deathprod project is always welcome.  That said, Geir Jenssen is the one who unexpectedly steals the show on this album, offering up some atypically dark and heavy fare to meet Sten's bleakness halfway.  Deathprod, of course, remains as characteristically blackened as ever.
Notably, this is not the first time that these two have paired for a split album, as Biosphere and Deathprod previously joined forces to pay tribute to Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim on 1998's Nordheim Transformed. Stator might have some larger purpose as well, as it is a commissioned work seemingly based upon the varying meanings of "stator," which generally describes the stationary parts of a rotating assembly, but originates from the Latin word meaning "one who stands by."  While that theme is not particularly evident in the finished music without some serious mental gymnastics, it may have either shaped the process or manifested itself in too abstract a way for my feeble mind to comprehend.  I suspect I will probably never know for sure.
The first time I listened to Stator, I did so blindly and was unaware that it was a split rather than a collaboration.  Then I listened to it somewhat blindly again, knowing that it was not a collaboration, but not knowing which artist was responsible for which pieces.  I found it unexpectedly difficult to tell who was who: Jenssen and Sten did a remarkable job finding a middle ground between their somewhat disparate aesthetics and holding a sustained mood of enigmatic ominousness (Geir did most of the heavy lifting, of course, as it is impossible to imagine Deathprod edging towards warmer, more melodic territory).  Stator is a very well-sequenced and thematically/stylistically coherent whole. That said, once I finally confirmed who was responsible for each piece, the differences between the two artists came very sharply into focus–anything that has anything resembling melody or structure was the work of Biosphere, while Sten's contributions are mostly murky, amorphous voids of blackness.  That should surprise no one.
It is equally unsurprising then that most of Stator’s most memorable moments belong to Biosphere.  One of the album's finest moments, for example, is "Space is Fizzy," which is built upon a throbbing pulse that twists into an oscillating negative image of itself at regular intervals.  Even better still is the warm drone of "Baud," which is the most distinctively "Biosphere" piece on the album, but escapes being business-as-usual by augmenting its dreamy thrum with stuttering and sputtering synth textures.  Also of note is the evocative opener "Muses-C," which initially feels like a looping, blurred, and flickering reel of a fighter plane firing its afterburners.
Although he seems mostly content to contribute brief brooding interludes between the more substantial Biosphere pieces, Helge does admirably rise to the occasion in two instances.  The first is "Shimmer/Flicker," a roaring and grinding nightmare of piece that lamentably dissolves into something resembling large, rippling drips in a cavernous subterranean lake after just two minutes.  That second part is certainly likable in its own right, but it is unavoidably anti-climactic after such a crushing opening.  Later, however, Deathprod finally gets everything exactly right: the album-closing 10-minute "Optical" resembles nothing less than a visceral, slow-motion avalanche.  Like most of the Deathprod pieces on the album, "Optical" demands to be listened to loudly on headphones–Sten does not deal in immediately gratifying things like hooks or rhythms; he weaves nuanced, complexly layered hellscapes.
It would not be fair to call Stator a flawed album because it is legitimately excellent, but there are a number of exasperating little things preventing it from being even better than it is.  For example, Geir Jenssen has no shortage of great ideas, but tends to blunt them somewhat by coming across as too conspicuously composed–his well-earned illusions of otherworldliness are dispelled by very earthbound nods to modern composition and his techno past.  Sten, on the other hand, always manages to keep his work organic, complex, dynamic, and distinctively his own, yet rarely finds an inspired core motif upon which to apply his prodigious talents.  That said, each artist does manage to transcend those limitations at least once on Stator: Biosphere's "Baud" and Deathprod’s "Optical" both easily rank among each artist's finest work.  It is hard to complain that an album only boasts two sustained flashes of brilliance, but the pessimist in me cannot help but see a stunning version of Stator that might have been.  Alas.  High expectations are a killer. That said, Stator is still one of the better albums to come out this year.  It is a relief to know that Sten and Jenssen are still just as capable of greatness as ever, even if it is intermittent.
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