Geir Jenssen's dark minimal pulsations were in recent efforts condensed into a frigid boil, a threnody of interstellar space. With this effort, originally designed for live performance, with space built in for rhythmic and melodic improvisation, the ambient techno dimension reappears, though significantly slanted toward the maverick, marginal and minor.
Jenssen appears to be interested in a kind of generative music on this occasion; a shape-shifting mobile whose linked series of sub-movements allow tension to slowly accumulate through measured release. Some solar wind whistling whittles into a fluid, watery treble on the opening piece. Anders Karlskas heaving trombone later arises from within this thick sonic space, as it does in several places over the course of the record, the frigid boil that serves as the cumulative effect of the initial seeps and sags.
In its most pronounced moments, rhythmic structures ring out as hissy crinkles that sound like ice cracking on a frozen lake. During "Kobresia", samples of piano and a dawn chorus of lilting female voices show that this remote region of separation is now one of intimacy. They retain traces of the placid, somewhat ominous thrums, but are more open and occasionally even buoyant. Similarly, while these segments gradually become stratified again like stone or rock formations, individual voices still retain a certain freedom of movement. The radically different phrasings and overall robust tone of this release make it one of the most eventful and successful works in Jenssen's catalogue thus far.
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