Biosphere - Substrata (Alternative Versions) [LP]

Biophon Records (Norway)

£25.20

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: BIO37LP
Barcode: 7090029003741
Release Date: 21 Oct 2022
Genre: Ambient

01: Poa Alpina (Allternative Version) - Biosphere
02: Chukhung (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
03: The Things I Tell You (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
04: Times When I know You´ll Be Sad (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
05: Hyperborea (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
06: Kobresia (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
07: Antennaria (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
08: Uva-Ursi (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
09: Sphere Of No-Form (Alternative Version) - Biosphere
10: Silene (Alternative Version) - Biosphere

Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London.
In 2016, Pitchfork ranked it at number 38 on its list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.
Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996.

David Stubbs´review of the original album in Melody Maker ,July 12th 1997.

Biosphere, aka Norwegian Geir Jenssen, is transmitting from a cold, polar outpost of the imagination. "Substrata"
is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty, the
music of a man who's stared too long and too hard at the Northern lights, a music of distant rumbles, tremors
underfoot, stray radio signals, yawning chasms and indistinct, grainy images in the half-light when the mind begins to play tricks. "Poa Alpina" reminds me of recent, frightening TV footage of vast chunks of iceberg cracking and falling away into the sea under the duress of global warming. As for "The Things I Tell You", imagine what Oasis would have sounded like had they been born Eskimos. "Sphere Of No Form" is shot through with a frantic peal like the Mayday song of the world's last whale and, best of all, "Kobresia" looms with a vast, mournful, symphonic motif, like the ghost of the Titanic. Chill out has never been this chilling.

“Substrata is the best ambient album I've heard in an ice age, an album of terrifying, desolate and all-enveloping beauty”
David Stubbs — Melody Maker