Biosphere - Biography
Biosphere’s Geir Jenssen has long been one of ambient music’s most intriguing producers. His work falls somewhere between film music’s cinematic sweep and the rigorous focus of a psycho-acoustic experiment. Austere yet rich in detail, Biosphere albums inhabit a liminal space where the organic meets the synthetic and the familiar is juxtaposed with the alien to create new and unique sonic worlds. As it alternates between the lyrical and the minimal Jensson’s music always boasts a tactile mystery that is rare in the world of abstract electronica.
Born in 1962 Jenssen is based in Tromso, Norway. Tromso’s arctic climes can be felt in Jenssen’s often icy sound design. Initially inspired by Brian Eno’s ambient work and by the electro-pop of groups like New Order and Depeche Mode, Jenssen acquired his first synthesizer in ’83 and immediately set out to define his own niche in the fledging universe of ambient music. His earliest music was released under the E-man alias and remains hard to find. After a brief stint in a group called Bel Canto Jenssen released acid house as Bleep. After a series of singles Bleep culminated in 1990’s The North Pole By Submarine. Jenssen retired the Bleep project the following year and drastically changed his focus.
After a 12” single for “The Fairy Tale”, Jenssen debuted the Biosphere project with the Microgravity full-length in 1991 on the small Origo Sound label. The record was picked up for wider release by R&S subsidiary Apollo in ’92 and received much critical acclaim. Tracks like “Tranquilizer,” “The Fairy Tale” and “Baby Interphase” feature lush textures, distant piano, haunting vocal samples and a subtle pulse to create some truly beautiful ambient techno.
1994 brought the release of the second Biosphere full-length, Patashnik. The music picks up right where the debut left off with shimmering synth washes, disembodied movie samples, spaced out melodies and hushed beats. With its long stretches of beatless ambience, Patashnik serves as a hint at the purely abstract and utterly sublime music Jenssen would focus on later.
After Patashnik gained extra attention due to the use of “Novelty Waves” in a Levis ad, Jenssen produced Polar Sequences, an album of abstract ambient music with Higher Intelligence Agency, released the compilation The Best Of Biosphere in Japan and worked on the soundtrack to a Norwegian film called Insomnia. But it was in ’97 that Jenssen would create what remains his finest work. Substrata is a landmark album not only for Biosphere but for ambient music as a genre. Released in the UK on Brian Eno’s All Saints imprint, this album is as deep as they come featuring layers of shifting textures rich in shimmering detail. Distant drones weave through an icy space while electroacoustic details and alien radio static flit through the mix. Through the dense atmosphere random voices break the stillness, adding a strange narrative structure. The music is completely hypnotic, engulfing the listener and carrying us to a strange, singular place that is both beautiful and unsettling. Substrata ranks alongside Eno’s On Land and Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II as one of the greatest ambient records of all time. The peerless Touch label reissued a remastered version of Substrata and included Jenssen’s excellent soundtrack for the Russian silent film Man With A Move Camera in 2001.
Substrata marked Jenssen’s move toward a more focused, minimal style of music. Signing with the Touch label the next Biosphere full-length, 2000’s Cirque is a perfect merger of Substrata’s icy drones and the minimal grooves found on the first two Biosphere records. The beats are much more buried and restrained on Cirque, allowing the cold yet organic layers of ambience to occupy the foreground. In 2002 the fifth Biosphere record, Shenzhou, was released. More abstract and minimal than previous efforts, it features gorgeous drones and symphonic loops of haunting melody and remains one of Biosphere’s best efforts. Autour de la Lune followed in 2004. Easily Jenssen’s most rigorously minimal album, these tracks feature chilling drones that seem to exist in the vacuum of space. Beautifully mixed, the record moves at a glacial, mesmerizing pace. In 2006 Jenssen made a left turn with Dropsonde. A deftly executed tribute to fusion-era Miles Davis, these songs recall the minimal drone and muffled pulse of In A Silent Way.
Biosphere has long been an active performer on the European festival circuit. 2009’s Wireless — Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol captures a live set by Jenssen for the first time.
Geir Jenssen has quietly created one of the most essential bodies of work in electronic music over the last two decades. Moving from post-techno pulse to purely abstract minimalism, Jenssen has kept his sense of melody and texture intact to create a sound that merges warm and cold, organic and synthetic and dark and light. His music is often familiar yet somehow strange as recognizable samples are pulled out of context amid dark drones and swirling loops. Jenssen’s taste and personality remain evident through Biosphere’s stylistic changes and mark his work as some of the most important in ambient music.