Bleep

AD 93 presents a collection of ambient masterpieces from the legendary Biosphere (Geir Jenssen). Having pioneered his style of “arctic ambient” music since emerging in the early 1990s, Jenssen lands on a new aesthetic for Angel’s Flight. Many of these recordings were originally composed for choreographer Ingun Bjørnsgaard's contemporary dance performance 'Uncoordinated Dog' in 2019, compiled here to form an album of wintry beauty. This LP contains some of the most ornate work of Biosphere’s career. Whereas Biosphere releases were once underpinned by synthetic tones and gentle electronic drums, this record studies chamber music arrangements whose sense of unsettled discord looks back to early 20th Century composers like Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. Tracks such as ‘In The Ballroom’ have a strong hauntological quality to them, their icy string sounds muffled by tape hiss in a manner which makes them both eerie and beguiling. This feeling heightens as Angel’s Flight progresses - the chamber music samples which push through on ‘Faith And Reverence’ and ‘Unclouded Splendour’ exacerbate the baroque and gothic qualities which were already on display in Angel’s Flight’s earlier stages. On the album’s final piece we find Biosphere’s older style re-exerting itself to some extent, though here the crackling electronics dissolve the orchestral instrumentation into beds of uneasy ambience.