Geir Jenssen

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Jenssen performing in Tolmin, Slovenia (2011)

Geir Jenssen (* 1962 in Tromsø , Norway ) is a Norwegian musician and photographer, best known under the name Biosphere since 1991 . With the publications of this project, he established himself as one of the most important artists of Ambient - Techno . Jenssen is an avid mountaineer in his spare time , for whom music is an important tool to process and express his associations with nature .

Life

Jenssen began producing his own pieces of music around 1983. In 1985 he founded the new age band Bel Canto with his friends Nils Johansen and Anneli Drecker , with whom he released two albums. In 1990 he left the band to start a solo career. In 1993 the Frankfurter label FAX + 49-69 / 450464 released the album The Fires Of Ork of the project of the same name, which consisted of Jenssen and the fax founder Pete Namlook .

With his album "Patashnik", released in 1994, Jenssen became known to a larger audience, as the track "Novelty Waves", which was taken from the album, was used by jeans producer Levi’s in the spring of 1995 for a television commercial. A video clip for the song "The Shield" was beyond several times in the MTV telecast Chill Out Zone and VIVA in the show Housefrau broadcast.

In 1997 Jenssen produced the soundtrack to Erik Skjoldbjærg's drama Death Sleep under the title "Insomnia: No Peace For The Wicked" .

Especially in his early productions, Jenssen fused electronic sound figures with field recordings of nature noises that are reminiscent of landscape images. In September and October 2001 he climbed the eight-thousander Cho Oyu in the Himalayas and made recordings of the sounds of nature and surroundings during the ascent. These were released five years later under the title "Cho Oyu 8201m - Field Recordings From Tibet".

In 2004, the radio station Radio France Culture invited him to a festival and enabled him to view the station's archive. A radio play version of Jules Verne's novel “ From the Earth to the Moon ” from the 1960s inspired him to set the material to music. He took numerous samples from the radio play , which he combined with recordings from the Mir space station and his own compositions to create an extremely minimalist work that was published in 2004 under the title “Autour de la lune”.

In 2011 the concept album N-Plants was released , in which Jenssen dealt with Japanese nuclear power plants . Initially, he had planned an album on the Japanese economic miracle after the Second World War, but then came across a photo of the Mihama nuclear power plant by the sea . Jenssen wanted to create a "soundtrack of some Japanese nuclear power plants", which should deal with questions of architecture, design, the choice of location and the potential danger of earthquakes. The album was completed on February 13, 2011. Despite the unexpected Fukushima nuclear disaster four weeks later , the album was released on Touch as planned and received mostly positive reviews. Pitchfork Media called it the best Biosphere album since Substrata in 1997. In 2015, the album Stator was released as a second co-production with Deathprod .

Discography (selection)

Solo albums

  • 1984: E-Man - E-Man (Likvidér)
  • 1989: Bleep - The North Pole By Submarine (SSR Records)
  • 1991: Biosphere - Microgravity (Origo Sound)
  • 1994: Biosphere - Patashnik (Origo Sound)
  • 1996: Biosphere - The Best Of Biosphere (Sony Records)
  • 1997: Biosphere - Substrata (Origo Sound)
  • 2000: Biosphere - Cirque (Touch)
  • 2001: Biosphere - Substrata² (remastered) / Man with a Movie Camera (Touch)
  • 2002: Biosphere - Shenzhou (Touch)
  • 2004: Biosphere - Autour de la lune (Touch)
  • 2005: Biosphere - Dropsonde (Touch)
  • 2006: Geir Jenssen - Cho Oyu 8201m - Field Recordings From Tibet (Ash International)
  • 2009: Biosphere - Wireless - Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol (Touch)
  • 2010: Biosphere - Live In Den Haag (Touch)
  • 2010: Biosphere - Outside By The Fjord (Touch)
  • 2011: Biosphere - N-Plants (Touch)
  • 2012: Biosphere - L'Incoronazione Di Poppea (Biophon Records)
  • 2013: Biosphere - Live At Vega, Copenhagen November 9, 1996 (Biophon Records)
  • 2014: Biosphere - Patashnik 2 (Biophon Records)
  • 2015: Biosphere - Sound Installations. 2000-2009 (Biophon Records)
  • 2016: Biosphere - Departed Glories (Smalltown Supersound)
  • 2017: Biosphere - The Petrified Forest (Biophon Records)
  • 2019: Biosphere - The Senja Recordings (Biophon Records)

Soundtracks

  • 1997: Biosphere - Insomnia: No Peace For The Wicked (Origo Sound, soundtrack to the film Death Sleep )
  • 1999: Geir Jenssen - Kill by Inches (Biophon Records)
  • 2010: Geir Jenssen - In the Shadow (Biophon Records)
  • 2010: Geir Jenssen - Nokas (Biophon Records)

Collaborations

Web links

Commons : Geir Jenssen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Geir Jenssen - Cho Oyu 8201 m - Field Recordings From Tibet at ikonen-magazin.de, accessed on October 23, 2011
  2. a b Biosphere - N-Plants at de-bug.de, accessed on October 23, 2011
  3. TO: 84 - Biosphere "N-Plants" ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at touchmusic.org.uk, accessed October 23, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.touchmusic.org.uk
  4. ^ Biosphere - N-Plants at pitchfork.com, accessed October 23, 2011
  5. Stator (Allmusic) at Allmusic (English)