Send "Biosphere " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In early February, Biosphere's Geir Jenssen made an album inspired by the architecture and potential instability of Japan's nuclear power plants. A month later, a huge earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. It's healthy to be skeptical about such claims to prescience, but dissembling isn't Jenssen's style: Clearly stated intentions and ideas are a defining feature of the Norwegian ambient-house producer's decades-long career. Plus, N-Plants' sleek contours and foreboding atmosphere easily bear out his theme. Having noted the eerie coincidence, we can dispense with it and let the best Biosphere album since 1997's definitive Substrata stand on its own.Widely regarded as an ambient milestone, Substrata represented a thoughtful dilettante hitting the reset switch. A period of fertile miscellany followed, from the processed Debussy loops of Shenzhou to the long-tone sci-fi marathon Autour de la Lune. Like Substrata, N-Plants is both a consummation and a palate-cleanser. Fully in ambient-house mode, Jenssen fashions together hazy drones, filtered synthesizers, microhouse percussion, and haunting vocal samples over classically plumb lines. Like Kate Simko's 2009 soundtrack for The Atom Smashers, the album can evoke particles of energy swarming through elegant, hulking metal curves. But this one-time archaeology student has never given up his field's patient curiosity and long view, and N-Plants can't be fully constrained by modern context. Ages of ice and stone drift through it, and the Arctic Circle is a looming presence....full text |
| Derives-webzine.blogspot |
| Geir Jenssen wrote this album during the first half of February, inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle, and his search of information led him to the paradox of the nuclear plants in Japan, most of them in earthquake and tsunami sensitive areas, so . One month later Japan was hit by a strong earthquake leading to the collapse of the Fukushima nuclear plant, and its innumerable consequences. Such coincidence is amazing and strangely connects this new Biosphere album. Having a look at pictures of these Japanese nuclear plants online it becomes obvious than they exhale a kind of deleterious otherworldliness, which can echo the pure digital nature of this record. I think the last time I seriously listened to Biosphere, it was in 1994, as he was one of the best examples of the ambient scene of this era, purely electronic and disconnected to reality. At this time I had difficulties to totally connect with this expression and it seemed somewhat superficial. I don't know if he changes or if my perception evolved, but in 2011, "N-plants" offers much more depth and nuances than my memory of his early releases. Maybe it's because of the passing of time and of the fact there is is nothing surprising anymore in this kind of music, no real entertainment, so all the sounds can contribute to something much more reflexive and abstract, and that's how I tried to tackle up with his compositions....full text |
| Astrangelyisolatedplace |
| Geir Jenssen (Biosphere) writes: “Early February 2011: Decided to make an album inspired by the Japanese post-war economic miracle. While searching for more information I found an old photo of the Mihama nuclear plant. The fact that this futuristic-looking plant was situated in such a beautiful spot so close to the sea made me curious. Are they safe when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis? Further reading revealed that many of these plants are situated in earthquake-prone areas, some of them are even located next to shores that had been hit in the past by tsunamis. A photo of Mihama made me narrow down my focus only to Japanese nuclear plants. I wanted to make a soundtrack to some of them, concentrating on the architecture, design and localizations, but also questioning the potential radiation danger (a cooling system being destroyed by a landslide or earthquake, etc). As the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said: “the plants were so well designed that ‘such a situation is practically impossible’. The album was finished on February 13th. On March 17th I received the following message from a Facebook friend: ‘Geir, some time ago you asked people for a photo of a Japanese nuclear powerplant. Is this going to be the sleeve of your new coming album? But more importantly: how did you actually predict the future? Kind regards, David.” It’s extremely haunting listening to some of these tracks, with everything that happened in mind. ‘Sendai’ especially, has a repetitive alarm/siren sample which seems to evoke a serene sense of destruction and panic. Weirdly though, not all of the tracks are melancholic and dark, and it doesn’t seem like you’ll finish up feeling saddened over the whole affair. Instead, (and as Geir intended), this music is about the industrial structures and surroundings, which at the time, may have represented something entirely different to the comparison we now make....full text |
Biosphere lyrics
|
| ||||||||||
