BIOSPHERE レコード& CD

Review: Geir Jennsen returns as Biosphere, one of the most enduring names in Norwegian electronic music and by now synonymous with elegant, plaintive ambient of the highest calibre. Inland Delta is made up of nine new musical pieces recorded between 2022 and 2023, primarily focused on improvised performance on a range of vintage keyboards recently restored to pristine condition. As lead track 'Franklin's Dream' demonstrates, there's space for traditional piano as well as the looming drones we know and love Biosphere for, all composed on the fly with a keen sense of harmony that comes from Jenssen's vast experience in this corner of experimental music.

Review: Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere continues to offer up expansive new editions of some of the many classic albums in his bulging back catalogue. The latest to get the treatment is 2004 set 'Autor De La Lune', which began life when he was commissioned by French radio to create a piece using something from their archive. He chose a radio dramatization of a Jules Verne story about a trip to the moon, sampled it up, threw in some recordings of the MIR space station, and then added his own instrumentation. The results - and particularly the stunning, 21-minute opener 'Translation' - are as inspired, minimalistic and atmospheric as you'd expect. This edition includes a second disc with five further pieces recorded as part of the project, but which have never been released before.

Review: After a run of reissues and a boundary-blurring fusion of classical music and electronica (January 2021's Angel's Flight), Norwegian ambient veteran Geir Jennsen AKA Biosphere has gone back to basics on Shortwave Memories. Ditching software and computers for analogue synths, drum machines and effects units, Jennsen has delivered album that he claims was inspired by the post-punk era electronics of Daniel Miller and Matin Hannett, but instead sounds like a new, less dancefloor-conscious take on the hybrid ambient/techno sound he was famous for in the early 1990s. The results are uniformly brilliant, making this one of the Norwegian trailblazer's most alluring and sonically comforting albums for decades.