MAX DAX interviews biosphere
“In the forest, the birds are louder than everything else”
In January 2011, Geir Jenssen, better known as ambient techno pioneer Biosphere, decided to put together an album combining two of his longtime obsessions: Japanese culture and utopias. The result, NPlants, is a spectral, fifty-minute meditation on Japanese nuclear power plants, completed one month before the nuclear crisis in Fukushima. We visited the reluctant visionary in Krakow to learn more. Geir Jenssen, you’re originally from Norway but have been living in Krakow for some years now, where you recently recorded an album of electronic music about Japanese nuclear power plants. What role does physical location play for you in the creative process? Why didn’t you move to Japan to record the album?
First, I live in Krakow because I fell in love with a woman. Second, I don’t think you have to necessarily live in the place of your artistic focus. It’s funny—I know musicians who need a beautiful view from the studio in order to create and record. I don’t need that. The Norwegian word for view is utsikt, which can literally be translated as “outsight”. Personally, I find it more important to work in an environment that will provide some sort of insight to the creative process. I don’t even need windows in the studio; I
could easily record my music in a bunker or in a hotel room. The physical connection to the external world really doesn’t matter to me, all I need is my laptop. My last album I recorded in my new studio in Krakow, which I’ve named after the Polish novelist Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known as Joseph Conrad. Being forced to draw from your imagination can do wonders for the creative process—Conrad certainly did. Heart of Darkness tells the story of Captain Marlow’s search for Mr. Kurtz along the Congo River. I think Conrad had also been the captain of a steamer on the same river, no?
Yes, but his experiences only served as the basis of something created within his imagination. That’s part of the essence of a
Max Dax photographed Geir Jenssen in the woods near Jenssen’s Krakow apartment, where in the forties, Polish partisans hid there from the German occupying forces . The woods are also one of Jenssen’s favorite places to conduct field recordings.
EB 3/2011
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