Music from Norway

It’s easy to forget that Norway shares a short stretch of frontier with Russia, right at the northernmost tip of the country. That region is where Geir Jenssen, the Norwegian electronic producer behind Biosphere, comes from, and where he has been composing his austere, disturbing and deeply textured ambience since the early 1980s. Biosphere has released many albums to date including 'Substrata,' voted the greatest ambient album of all time on the Hyperreal website, and has collaborated with Arne…

Triple LP version. Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen - a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalog of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his works on ambient techno and arctic-themed pieces, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources. His 1997 album Substrata (TO 050CD/BIO 005LP) was voted by the users of the Hyperreal website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album. Cirque - originally released in 2000 - was Biosphere's…

Double LP version. Patashnik was originally released by R&S Records/Apollo in 1994. It was number 1 in NME's Independent Chart in March 1994 and reached number 50 in the UK official album chart. The track "Novelty Waves" was used in Michel Gondry's Levi's 501 Jeans "Drugstore" spot, and holds, according to the Guinness World Records 2004, the record for "Most awards won by a TV commercial". Double CD version comes with the bonus 12-track album Patashnik 2. "One reason why Jenssen's work stands o…

**Deluxe gatefold reissue, re-mastered and cut by Stefan Betke (Pole), including 14 minute bonus track. David Stubbs, Melody Maker, 1997: "The best ambient album i've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty"** Biosphere's 'Substrata' is a rarely topped pinnacle of the '90s ambient canon. On its 18th birthday, the album's producer Geir Jenssen's Biophon label treats it to a subtle facelift at Pole's mastering desk, reanimating the still-mindblowing l…

Outstanding reissue. CD version. House in deluxe gatefold Stoughton tip-on jacket. Newly remastered audio. Includes rare archive photos and liner notes Q&A with Krog. The work of Karin Krog may be unfamiliar to much of the world, but in her native Norway and Scandinavia at large, she's practically a household name. This says much about the local enthusiasm for post-bop jazz but also about the tyranny of distribution: until 1994, Karin Krog's albums weren't available in the USA or UK, meaning thr…

A remastered version of Biosphere's debut albumMicrogravity with a bonus album of previously unreleased tracks. From Wikipedia: "Geir Jenssen began releasing his music as Biosphere on obscure Norwegian compilation albums. His first Biosphere releases were the 12-inch single The Fairy Tale and the album Microgravity, both of which were rejected by SSR as unmarketable. Microgravity was released in 1991 on the Norwegian label Origo Sound, and saw wider release via the R&S Records subsidiary Apollo …

ARNE NORDHEIM Forum for the Arts (1969)Taken from the soundtrack to A Forum for the Arts  –  a promotional film about Henie Onstad Kunstsenter directed by Pål Bang-Hansen in 1970. Original material recorded in Studio Eksperymentlne Warsaw, 1969. Edited and reconstructed by Helge Sten at Audio Virus Lab, 2012. Licensed by Rannveig GetzDEATHPROD Studio (2010)Taken from the sound and light installation Studio commissioned for the John Cage – The Anarchy of Silence exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstse…

UK experimental institution Touch is now out with a split album from Biosphere and Deathprod, titled Stator.The two Norwegian artists have been producing ambient and other abstract musical forms on their own for well over two decades. Biosphere, real name Geir Jenssen, is likely known best for his classic 1997 album Substrata, though he's put out more than a dozen LPs since then, including many for Touch and his own label Biophon. Meanwhile, Deathprod, AKA Helge Sten (once part of the band Motor…

Korm Plastics is proud to present the twenty-eigth release in the Brombron series (missing numbers? may never follow?). Originally a co-production between Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now hosted by co-curator Frans de Waard. In the year 2000 Frans de Waard and Extrapool started the Brombron project. Two or more musicians become artists in residence in Extrapool, an arts initiative in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with a fully equipped sound recording studio. These artists can work in a certain a…

Arne Nordheim (1931-2010) is widely regarded as Norway’s best-known composer after Edvard Grieg. But did you know that he was a multidisciplinary artist and that his work inspired several of the country’s greatest visual artists? Arne Nordheim’s art extends way beyond the confines of music. Throughout his life, he also worked closely with other art forms, such as theatre, fine arts, ballet, film, literature, architecture and installation art. In 1955, a journalist asked the young, up-and-coming …

Beautifully presented reissue of classic archival electroacoustic works, within "Warszawa-Oslo" project, a recollection, phonographic documentation and reactivation of bonds between Polish and Norwegian electro-acoustic music, presentation of their individual character and unquestionable significance on the international scale. This beautifully designed set (with extensive booklet of note) collects some of the most exciting, shimmering and crystalline electronic sounds to be unearthed in quite a…

7" vinyl was the quintessential format for popular music. Today, it is an undervalued and mostly promotional medium, used as a fetishistic signpost for a time of musical authenticity and a "healthy" popular culture. Two tracks from Biosphere originally recorded for Hågogaland Teater, Tromsø, Norway in 2006 and remastered in 2011. Part of the Touch Sevens series, cut by Jason at Transition. Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft.

1st live album by Norway's Geir Jenssen - recorded in 2007 by Chris Watson & mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen. In the early 1990s, he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic & enduring. Here, he incorporates samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby & trumpet by Anders Karlskas, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound.

Reissued: Biosphere's 2nd CD for Touch after Cirque (Touch # TO:46, 2000) is a double CDin digipack designed by Jon Wozencroft. CD One - Substrata. Originally released in 1997 on All Saints Records, this remastered version of Substrata contains 11 tracks with a total length of 55:20. '...by many (the undersigned included) considered to be the finest ambient album of the 1990s' (Motion-State 51), and 'Three years after its release, biosphere's 'Substrata' is already being recognised as one of th…

It is with great joy and honour that we are able to celebrate our 30th release with a new album by one of the most distinguished personalities in Norwegian music. Not only that, Dodeka, meaning twelve in Greek, is a small sensation in that the twelve pieces presented here have never been available on record before. These compositions are made from the building blocks and basic elements from Nordheim´s work in Warszaw between 1967 and 1972. Considering the primitive working methods and the equipm…

Double album by Jan Garbarek (soprano and tenor saxophones) and The Hilliard Ensemble: early, ancient Greek and folk vocal music with improvisation, recorded April 1998 at Propstei St. Gerold, Austria, produced by Manfred Eicher.

Complete concert by Keith Jarrett's European Quartet with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen, recorded at Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, on 16 April 1979 and first released by ECM in 2012 as a double CD.

Live double album by the trio of Jan Garbarek (saxophones), Egberto Gismonti (guitars, piano) and Charlie Haden (double bass), recorded at the Amerika Haus in Munich in April 1981 and first released by ECM in 2012.

Keith Jarrett's European quartet with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen, live at the Village Vanguard, New York, May 1979: six Jarrett compositions on 2CD, produced by Manfred Eicher.

Three early Jan Garbarek albums on 3CD: Sart (quintet with Bobo Stenson, Terje Rypdal, Jon Christensen, recorded Oslo 1971), Witchi-Tai-To (1973) and Dansere (1975) by the Garbarek-Stenson Quartet with Palle Danielsson and Christensen. Produced by Manfred Eicher.