Geir Jenssen and Helge Sten, Biosphere and Deathprod, respectively, are two of the most prominent names in Norwegian music. Now, they line up for another round. But don’t collaborate.
Geir Jenssen and Helge Sten, Biosphere and Deathprod, respectively, are two of the most prominent names in Norwegian music. Biosphere graduated from an original take on techno (Microgravity, Patashnik), via collaborations with the late Pete Namlook, to composing some of the most highly regarded ambient music of the nineties and early noughties and sound making new and unexplored fields. Sten is a member of super-special Supersilent, and a much-in-demand producer, and as Deathprod has graced the world with his own sophisticated ambient and electronica. Together the two contributed interwoven, perfectly complementary remixes celebrating experimental electronica doyen Arne Nordheim on 1998’s Nordheim Transformed.
Now, they line up for another round. But don’t collaborate. Just like Nordheim Transformed, both artists were commissioned (here by Norway’s Tape to Zero festival) and worked separately. Perhaps they are such kindred spirits that they don’t feel the need to actually commingle. Whereas they divvied up the tracks equally on the former album, here Deathprod has one more out of the seven, though respective total playing times are almost exactly the same, about twenty minutes each.
Stator begins with an extraterrestrial tearing sound idiomatic to Biosphere, the aurora borealis as it crackles in the sky, on “Muses-C.” Deathprod replies with “Shimmer/Flicker,” the reverberation of a giant gong, as proximate if one with the brass. Acid raindrops plash down on soft soil. “Baud” is Biosphere’s series of attempts to communicate a message through an alien, irregular Morse that is constantly being rebuffed, but which insists on continuing to transmit, until the message becomes the medium and twists into a pas de deux with its own echo. “Polychromatic” and “Disc” by Deathprod are two, brief exoplanetary fluorescences—one sunrise, one sunset. “Space is Fizzy” is Biosphere applying fuzzy logic to the clockwork universe of de La Mettrie—mankind a machine—no difference between living and dead material. Deathprod’s “Optical” is a ten-minute cloud of unknowing I would happily allow glaze my eyes over for another hour or two.
Released in typically high-quality Touch packaging, slightly oversize gatefold sleeve, photography and design by label co-founder Jon Wozencroft. Here’s hoping a “true” collaboration lies in the not-too-distant future.
Stator is available on Touch.
