I'm currently listening to
Substrata by
Biosphere (a perennial favourite of mine) as I've just heard that they released a new album (entitled
Wireless ) a few days ago. Just ordered a copy as the
press blurb (below) sounds rather intriguing...
*****
Recorded live at
The Arnolfini, Bristol, 27th October 2007 by the doyen of sound recordists,
Chris Watson, using 2 x Sony ECM 77s with a Nagra P11 Ares flash card recorder, and from desk to hard drive. The recording was mixed, edited and mastered by Touch stalwart
BJNilsen, in Berlin during March 2009.
This concert was part of Touch 25 Live, which also featured a performance of
Storm [by
Chris Watson &
BJNilsen].
Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer
Geir Jenssen, and this is his sixth release for Touch. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. His last album,
Dropsonde, wasn't a soundtrack like the interwoven
Substrata, nor an episodic journey in the way that
Autour de la Lune is. It pushed new directions towards the jazz colors of
Miles Davis and
Jon Hassell, while re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. Here
Geir Jenssen takes this further, incorporating samples of field recordings by
Jony Easterby and trumpet by
Anders Karlskås, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound. A landmark release for
Biosphere, his first live album, heralding new beginnings without jettisoning the past...
*****
Rob