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Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer Geir Jenssen, and this is his fifth release for Touch. 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 and enduring. Dropsonde isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, while re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper." Just as a dropsonde (weather balloon) measures pressure, humidity, and temperature, this is synaesthetic, carefully-measured music. Liquid beats, samples as snapshots, and faraway speeches combine to produce a surprisingly deep human warmth.
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