Biosphere - Angel's Flight (AD 93)

Vinyl & CD in January 2021.

Great news

Hell fuck yes.

Was surprised to see it's out on ad93 (aka whities)

This is based on Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14. This might go either way for me really. His previous albums based on classical stuff has been both really great and pretty bad for me. Shenzhou, that's based on Debussy samples, is great, but then again L’incoronazione di Poppea, that's based on the Monteverdi's opera, is at parts at least pretty dire to listen to. Departed Glories that samples Ukrainian and Polish folk music stands somewhere in the middle.

Let's see..

  On 11/11/2020 at 11:59 AM, d-a-m-o said:

Was surprised to see it's out on ad93 (aka whities)

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Yeah didn't expect that!

Also slightly annoying that Gier's spent the last five years slowly getting his entire catalogue to have uniform package design then this comes along not on Biophon and messes it up with a fucking jewel case.

The title track sounds pretty pretty good. Definitely intrigued!

Preview of all tracks.

https://www.decks.de/track/biosphere-angels_flight/chn-bp

Not sure if I like the previews or not

I quite like the sound of these. Pretty different to Shenzhou and Departed Glories, which are the obvious comparison points in his catalogue.

Some of this sounds okay but I don't think I'm going to like all of it. Still looking forward to hearing it properly.

i will stream this. if i love it. i will purchase

not (self-released) btw, released by AD 93 (fka Whities)
https://ad93.bandcamp.com/

  On 1/21/2021 at 10:25 AM, cear said:

not (self-released) btw, released by AD 93 (fka Whities)
https://ad93.bandcamp.com/

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Thank you, fixed.

Boomkat write up:

https://boomkat.com/products/angel-s-flight-e142b0c8-2529-444f-8e68-23803b0468dd

Norwegian ambient maestro Geir Jenssen blurs Beethoven into a spectral haze on this disarming suite of eerie vignettes. Fans of Akira Rabelais' unmatched "Eisoptrophobia" need this one.

On Gier Jenssen's 2016 album "Departed Glories", the Norwegian veteran used barely-audible samples of Eatern European and Russian folk music to illustrate a narrative that explored the Medieval history of Poland. These ghostly audio snippets were processed through Akira Rabelais' surrealist DSP software Argeïphontes Lyre and then smudged into echoes of a distant world. On "Angel's Flight", Jenssen takes a similar stylistic route, but uses Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 as the source material, allowing familiar traces of the German composer's favorite late work to peek through frozen drones and haunted pads.

This music, whether you realize it or not, has been repeated thru our collective consciousness again and again since its completion in 1826, so hearing it stretched, filtered and crushed by Jenssen is a fitting way to reabsorb it. "Angel's Flight" sounds like time itself wrestling with musical hierarchies, as themes and tropes dance and heave through aural molasses, inspiring the memory to land on images of movies, ballrooms, music lessons or adverts. It's also strikingly sad and beautiful, and while it relies on elements we've been assured are sad - minor keys, spooky drones, distant strings - Jenssen handles the elements with a restraint that's way too rare.

Somehow, "Angel's Flight" never descends into the realm of forced melancholy - rather it seeps into your pores slowly and affects you gradually, urging you to play it once more. Sadbient? Maybe, but this sounds strangely timeless.

sadbient. boomkat. 

I was listening to Microgravity today and The Fairy Tale has from at around 3:04 (and again at 4:04) a breakbeat loop with a synth lead pattern that I knew I knew, but it took a while for me to find the source; it isn't mentioned anywhere, so I had to dig it up - it's from The Alliance's Thoughts Of You (Club Mix), 1989.

All previews are up on bandcamp!  I quite like it, fits a certain mood.  I kinda wish i didnt read that boomkat write-up or 'how its made' because for me that takes away from the magic of hearing it fresh imo

Holy moly smoly that CD packaging is great

Listening to it now and so far it's very good. Way better than I expected. Yes, I bought it without listening to the previews first.. I like to live dangerously.

It's sounding pleasant. Lovely album art.

So far this sounds great. And yea, this art is really slick.

I need to buy that, the album in it's entirety is actually really good. The previews didn't do it justice

Listening to it just made me go back to Dropsonde, which is an absolute classic gem.