In
a career spanning nearly two decades, seven solo albums
and a number of collaborations, Geir Jenssen has gone
from one third of a pop outfit to being one of the most
respected names on the electronic scene. Having given
up his archaeological studies to concentrate on music
in the mid eighties, Jenssen was one of the founding
members of Norwegian pop outfit Bel Canto, with whom
he recorded two albums, White-Out Conditions
(1987) and Birds Of Passage (1989), before
leaving to concentrate on his solo work. His first post-Bel
Canto album, The North Pole By Submarine, as
Bleep, was heavily influenced by the late eighties house
and acid movement, yet, it is with his second project,
Biosphere, named after the Biosphere 2 scientific project,
that Jenssen gained recognition across the board. If
his first couple of albums under this moniker were still
displaying traces of club culture, Jenssen was already
moving away from straightforward dance music to explore
more atmospheric grounds. In October 1995, following
the international success of Novelty Waves
(Patashnik, 1994), used a the soundtrack for
a Levi’s advert, Jenssen was commissioned a new
piece for the Polar Music Festival, held in his native
town of Tromsø, situated 70 degrees north of
the Arctic circle, on which he worked with British musician
Bobby Bird, aka Higher Intelligence Agency. The commission
was released two years later as Polar
Sequences and was followed by a return collaboration,
Birmingham Frequencies,
recorded in Bird’s hometown. Around the same time,
Jenssen released what remains his most accomplished
record with Substrata.
Autour De La Lune was originally commissioned
by Radio France Culture’s Atelier De Creation
Radiophonique and the French Ministry of Culture as
a one-off performance to be premiered at Le Festival
De Radio France in Montpellier, Southern France, at
the end of July last year. For this, Jenssen was granted
exceptional access to the radio’s vast archives,
and eventually started work based on, and inspired by,
a dramatisation of Jules Verne’s De La Terre
A La Lune (From Earth To Moon). The original book,
published in 1868, was a stunningly accurate tale of
a manned space mission as would happened a hundred years
later, and was followed by a second novel, Autour
De La Lune, four years later. For his project,
Jenssen originally used a series of sample taken for
the 1960 radio broadcast together with sounds recorded
on the MIR space station. The festival was eventually
cancelled due to strikes, but the piece was broadcast
on Radio France Culture on 21 September 2003 and made
available for download for a while. Jenssen continued
to work on this piece afterward, adapting it to release
it as an album.
Autour De La Lune, described as a ‘symphony
in nine movements’, opens with an epic twenty-two-minute
journey through sonic pulsations and chromatic alterations
forming the core of a slow moving melody. Despite the
bare sonic palette used, Translation is monumental
and fascinating. From there on, Autour De La Lune
sinks into darker territories, with the sparse Vibratoire,
Déviation and Circulaire set
at the heart of deep space. All three tracks are formed
around a single infra bass drone, and appear almost
static, as if frozen in time. Life returns on Disparu
as Jenssen carves a repetitive melodic motif. Heard
at close range (headphones), a faint beat structure
is actually perceptible in the distance as it waxes
and wanes with the melody. Rotation, Modifié
and Inverse as set somewhere in between Translation’s
riches and Déviation’s desolation.
They are also manifestation of Jenssen growing interest
in electro-acoustic, as resonances and radio signals
interfere with tonal textures. Tombant, which
closes the album, appears to return to the ambience
of Translation, yet the mood is more subdued
here as if the fuel level of Jenssen’s space ship,
on its way back to Earth, was getting low.
As Geir Jenssen matures with every album, he continues
to surprise his audience, and Autour De La Lune
is one of his most evocative and thrilling records to
date. Despite the austerity of this album, Jenssen builds
on a rich emotional palette to create a stunning and
dense piece of work.
4.9 |
