Biosphere - Departed Glories

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  • "Haunted" has become a clichéd word used to describe music that sounds dissonant, unsettling and alien. It's easy to understand why: influential artists like Burial, Demdike Stare and Boards Of Canada have long brought a ghostly quality to their music by using old, obscure samples and wisps of disembodied voice. But Biosphere did it first. 54-year-old Norwegian producer Geir Jenssen has been making eerie, darkly beautiful electronic music for roughly 26 years now, yet none of his 11 previous albums are quite like his latest. Departed Glories was inspired by the history of Poland's Wolski forest, where executions took place during World War II and a Medieval queen hid among nuns for fear of the invading Tatars centuries before. The album cover is a rare color photo of an unknown Armenian woman taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in the early 1900s. The music itself was created almost entirely from recordings of Polish and Ukrainian folk music, some of which dates back to the '30s and '40s. So how else to talk about this evocative, 70-minute album without calling it haunted? Ghosts and half-forgotten songs of the past are all but made corporeal by Jenssen and the Argeïphontes Lyre, a piece of "impossible to understand" music software that favors abstraction and randomization. These 17 tracks are all texture, drone and wilted tension—the rhythms and synth melodies of Biosphere's recent albums have vanished. "Sweet Dreams Form A Shade" and "Behind The Stove" float in the angelic vicinity of Julianna Barwick and Grouper, while a tonal piece like "Invariable Cowhandler" is more about delicate frequency modulation and imperceptible atmosphere. "Down On Ropes" is pure low-end rumble and subconscious melody, almost womblike. Departed Glories keeps to a sparse but bewitching sound palette, which makes each arrangement engage directly and deeply with the listener. As Jenssen recently explained to RA's Andrew Ryce, "It's kind of introverted music, maybe… I feel it's more like you should listen to it alone." The sense of a haunted place—a moonlit forest, perhaps, or a cold, disused building—pervades the album. There's a uniformity across the music that makes it all feel beholden to one location, as if Departed Glories is itself a ghost unable to pass on. So while some songs stand out from the others (the gossamer "With Precious Benefits To Both" is a majestic highlight, and the guitar and organ in "Aura In The Kitchen With Candlesticks" are a welcome change), many of them blend together in their resonant feedback and reverberating voices. These qualities foster a kind of hypnosis, or at least make the album sound like a fully realized concept, but they can also feel flat and motionless. Departed Glories could be the best Biosphere album since the canonized Substrata, but that probably says more about the records in between than anything else. Where this detailed, otherworldly ambience remains true to Jenssen's early work, the movement and textural range that marked his classics are largely missing. Still, this is a record that Biosphere fans will enjoy losing themselves in. Like the Wolski forest and its ghosts, Departed Glories brings you far into its unknown expanse, never showing you a way out.
  • Tracklist
      01. Out Of The Cradle 02. Well And Purpose 03. Down On Ropes 04. Free From The Bondage You Are In 05. With Their Paddles In A Puddle 06. Than Is The Mater 07. Sweet Dreams Form A Shade 08. Aura In The Kitchen With The Candlesticks 09. Departed Glories 10. Whole Forests Of Them Appearing 11. Invariable Cowhandler 12. Behind The Stove 13. You Want To See It Too 14. In Good Case And Rest 15. Tomorrow Then We Will Attend 16. With Precious Benefits To Both 17. Fall Asleep For Me
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