Autour De La Lune

Fourth Biosphere release on Touch. "Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's [Geir Jenssen] career spans nearly two decades, six albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit. Says Jenssen on his latest commission: 'Radio France Culture contacted me some time ago and proposed a commission that was to be premiered at the Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier. I was granted access to Radio France's archives and given permission to use this vast source of audio material. I settled on this early 60s dramatisation of Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune that totally captivated me. The story is quite amazing -- Verne wrote it in the nineteenth century; still he managed to describe a manned space flight in such detail one is stunned. In De la Terre à la Lune Verne describes a space mission that sees the astronauts launched from Florida and returning from space to land in the Pacific Ocean -- exactly the same procedure that the US space program would follow many, many years later. I have sampled bits and pieces of the dramatisation's dialogue, coupled it with sounds recorded at the MIR space station and then incorporated it with my own compositions.' Following the original broadcast, Jenssen continued to work on the recording which now sees the light of day as Autour de la Lune, a 74 minute symphony made up of nine 'movements'. The propulsive opening sequence 'Translation' gives way to the crosstalk and scrambled communications of 'Rotation' and 'Modifié', before the listener is enveloped in a dense and seemingly endless space (the sound of zero gravity?). The circular flight of Autour de la Lune is Biosphere at his most expansive. Featuring a specially-commissioned painting by Tor-Magnus Lundeby, one of Norway's most prominent visual artists, this new release is set to compete with Brian Eno's 'Apollo' recordings as the definitive homage to the space age."