Things have been really crazy lately with all the wedding preparation, so I've found myself setting aside an hour at the end of each day to slow everything down, read or write, and to play some pulse-slowing field recordings and ambient music to steady my mind.
One album that I keep returning to, sometimes multiple times in a row is a collaboration between Biosphere and The Higher Intelligence Agency called Polar Sequences released on the highly sought-after Beyond label.
The album is an exceptional example of arctic ambient - with its cold and desolate air and a meditative, drone-like quality.
The liner notes reveal that the album is, in fact, a live recording capturing concert performances of the two artists together in Tromsø, Northern Norway from 1995.
Quote:
'Tromsø, 70 degrees north, in the Arctic region, in the middle of the most active northern lights zone. In summer time, land of the midnight sun. In winter, total darkness.
In October 1995, as part of the annual Polar Music Festival, Geir Jenssen of Biosphere and Bobby Bird of The Higher Intelligence Agency, were commissioned by Nor Concerts to collaborate together on a musical project to take place in Geir's home town of Tromsø, Norway. The brief was for them to perform three concerts, using sounds sourced from the area as the basis of the music - the machinery of the local mountain cable lift, the snow, the ice etc…
The performances from which this recording is taken, took place on top of a mountain above Tromsø, in a cabin reached by the cable car, in which the audience were transported up the mountain in turn.'
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The album was originally issued in a limited run of 5000 in 1996, and later reissued on Headphone Records in 2003.
Give a listen to the opening segment, "Cimmerian Shaft"
and the stark album closer, "Meltwater"