Shenzhou [Reissue with bonus album]

by Biosphere

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davechappeurs This took me a little longer to love than a lot of his other work. But now that I'm there with it - just wow! The bottom-end in his music shakes me to the core every time! Favorite track: Thermal Motion.

demegy Sheer perfection through a relatively simple concept, the effectiveness of which is difficult to achieve in Ambient Music. Timeless Work. Favorite track: Path Leading To The High Grass.

Burke Devlin Speaks without words Favorite track: Fast Atoms Escape.

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1.	Shenzhou 04:59	buy track
2.	Spindrift 04:37	buy track
3.	Heat Leak 04:56	buy track
4.	Ancient Campfire 07:42	buy track
5.	Houses On The Hill 05:39	buy track
6.	Two Ocean Plateau 03:07	buy track
7.	Thermal Motion 04:25	buy track
8.	Path Leading To The High Grass 03:51	buy track
9.	Fast Atoms Escape 03:26	buy track
10.	Green Reflections 03:31	buy track
11.	Bose-Einstein Condensation 02:45	buy track
12.	Gravity Assist 07:02	buy track
13.	Griz Nez Windy 03:21	buy track
14.	Dover Ferryport 02:38	buy track
15.	Kent Country Train 02:28	buy track
16.	Lorry Shuttle Shaft 03:08	buy track
17.	Sea Cat 02:29	buy track
18.	Shuttle Hiss Tunnel 03:47	buy track
19.	Calais Ferryport 02:52	buy track
20.	Shuttle 03:18	buy track
21.	The White Cliffs Of Dover 03:55	buy track

about

Paul Cooper, Pitchfork: ""Shenzhou", aside from being the name of the Chinese manned-spaceflight vehicles, means "magic vessel", and I can't imagine a more apt description for Geir Jenssen's latest excursion into ambient deep listening. After following an Aphexian trajectory with his releases on Apollo, the ambient sublabel of Belgium's R&S; Records, Jenssen veered from the padded sci-fi-inspired techno of Microgravity and Patashnik with 1997's Substrata, a genre-defining exploration of drifting soundscapes. Substrata remains for many the album that perfectly expresses the serenity and intensity of Arctic wildernesses, a landscape Jenssen knows intimately, having spent much of his life in the Norwegian Arctic Circle.

In 2000, Jenssen nearly eclipsed the success of Substrata with Cirque, a frequently frosty submerging of excerpted conversations and found environmental sounds that rivals Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project in its rumbling, gauzy beauty. Jenssen again relies on found sound as source material for Shenzhou, but this time, the found sound is old vinyl recordings of the orchestral works of French Impressionist composer and ambient precursor, Claude Debussy. Jenssen lifts fragments of these scratched records in a similar manner as he did for Cirque's "Black Lamb Grey Falcon" and "Iberia Eterea".

The ten tracks (out of the dozen on the album) that follow this model all begin as a barely audible hum, like a small electrical transformer, out of which the dust-dappled loops of Debussy's woodwind, brass, and strings emerge, condense, and fade out into pink noise rustles. Unlike Steve Reich's phase pieces or Brian Eno's Discreet Music, though, Jenssen doesn't set his loops against each other to produce juxtapositions and piquant dissonance; he uses them to describe imagined terrain, at first glance monotonously flat and barren, but on concentration, replete with minute detailing. The overall effect of these pieces is a sense of immensity. The orchestral loops sound distant, abandoned in a vast wilderness, and strenuously battling against Arctic winds. Jenssen sets the listener down in this wilderness as an aloof observer, a witness to the music's futile struggles against entropic forces.

The two tracks not derived from Debussy share the same hypnotic aesthetic. The brief interlude "Bose-Einstein Condension" is a loop of piano chords lolloping in search of coherence, while "Gravity Assist" is a longer voyage into woofer-quaking low-frequency manipulation, bell-like drones, and contrails of subdued noise. I can't help but feel that these tracks fit awkwardly and break up the conceptual flow of the album. This, however, is a minor quibble given the power of this music. Shenzhou is unquestionably a magic vessel, but one that reveals its enchantment only to those who pay close attention."

credits

released December 8, 2017

Cat. no. BIO27D, BIO27CD, BIO27LP

Photos by Geir Jenssen.
Mastered by Stefan Betke.
Designed by Joanna John.

CD1 Shenzhou

All tracks written and produced by Geir Jenssen.
1-10 based on the orchestral works by Claude Debussy.
Remastered by Stefan Betke.
All tracks published by Sony ATV.

℗ 2002 Biophon Records
© 2017 Biophon Records

CD2 The Samphire Tower

Written for The Samphire Tower, a building designed by Jony Easterby and Pippa Taylor, situated on Samphire Hoe in Kent. Supported by the Arts Council of England.

Track 1-8 written by Geir Jenssen and Jony Easterby.
Track 9 written by Walter Kent.
Geir Jenssen: electronics. Jony Easterby: location recordings.
Mastered by Stefan Betke.
Track 1-8 published by Biophon Records.

℗ 2005 Biophon Records
© 2017 Biophon Records

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Biosphere Tromsø, Norway

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