This article will be a two-parter. The first part is the story of how I came to buy and love Biosphere's Substrata, the first beatless ambient album I heard. The second part will be a review of that album. The break is clearly marked below, so readers can get at whichever parts interest them. This music is now just over twenty years old, but I find it as fresh now as when I first heard it sometime around 2005. There are two albums I use to introduce people to Ambient music with. This is one of them, and the other is Loscil's most excellent Coast / Range / Arc. Both are great starting points for the genre.
Note: the link to Substrata above includes the extra music released for the reprint; the original album is just the first 11 tracks, ending with "Silene".
The Story
Over the years, I have gotten into what I consider weirder and weirder music. First, back in about 1991, I had bought mostly stuff like Best of Blondie, a bunch (but not all yet) of the Moody Blues albums, and other assorted rock; but usually stuff that leaned toward atmospherics. One of my early electronic favorites, Yello – One Second, is quite a good album, and I still like to listen to it occasionally. Despite being electronic music, it often has a Latin vibe to it. Here's one track from it, "Moon On Ice". Their terribly famous "Oh Yeah" is also on there.
Around 1995, a friend of mine (Maynard!) sent me a tape of Orbital – Snivilization. I was not into Techno yet, and it took me quite a few listens to get into this. Maynard warned me about it; he said, "This will sound really repetitive. But the music is in a different place than you're used to finding it." So I gave it a chance. I listened to it, and wasn't impressed or repulsed. So I kept trying. Maybe on the 30th time through it, in the car (my wife's Accord, near the University of Iowa Dental Building), "Science Friction" caught my ear, and so began my deeper journey into electronic music.
Later, around 1997, I found The Orb – Orbvs Terrarvm. This is a sprawling epic of Ambient Techno/Dub with very strange textures and very slowly-changing soundscapes. I'm lucky to have found this; my wife found it in a record store on the listening stand (Orblivion had just been released), and bought it for me because she thought I'd like it. That's probably based on my liking of Enigma – MCMXC a.d.
During the coming years, I became aware that such a thing as "zero-beat ambient" existed. I've always been interested in rhythm, having grown up on Henry Mancini music, so I assumed I would never like such a thing.
Then I came across Biosphere. I was browsing someone's shared iTunes directory at work (Acclaim Cheltenham), looking at genres. I saw a track called "Baby Satellite", and its genre was listed as "Dream". I wondered what that would sound like, and I loved it. I managed to get this file from him the day Acclaim shut down. Ordinarily I buy all my music to support the artists, but this one is unavailable. So I'm lucky I narfed the file.
I came to find out this was a remix of a track from an early masterpiece of Ambient Techno, 1991's Microgravity. Orbital (soon to become masters of the genre) was still recording on cassette tapes at the time. So I got a legit copy of Microgravity because it had been reissued. Reading up on the artist, I found out he is responsible for Substrata, one of the finest Ambient albums of the 90s. It is entirely beatless, with only hints of percussion in one or two tracks.
On Microgravity was CloudWalker II, a beatless track. It's quite cool. This along with the very atmospheric vibe on the album convinced me that if anyone could make a beatless album that I would like, it was Biosphere.
So I got Substrata, and over many, many listens I came to love it.
The Review
It's hard to approach a work that has so much written about it, so I'll just give my personal impressions of what makes Substrata such a good listen. When I introduce it to people who aren't used to this kind of music, I ask them to give it the "15-minute test". 15 minutes is enough to get a few minutes into the third full track after the introduction. It was at this point in my first listen that I was unsure what I thought of the music, _but I wanted to know where the artist would go with it._ I was intrigued enough to finish it and come back for more.
The introduction ("As the Sun Kissed the Horizon") is a short field recording taken somewhere near a highway and a school. You can hear traffic and children playing in the distance. What ties it together is the drone of what sounds like a single-engine airplane passing by. Everything is so quiet, that it invites the listener to take in every little nuance of the audio. The hiss of tires on the road, the roar of a semi-truck, and the slow movement of the plane across the soundscape, with the accompanying change in pitch due to the Doppler Effect. The kind of attention needed to draw out the details in this track will help perceive the subtle details in the tracks that follow.
Now that we're in the proper frame of mind, the music starts in earnest. In Poa Alpina, we're presented with Substrata's generally misty atmosphere, and a 4-note melody floating and echoing above several layers of rich synth and string backgrounds. While this music is minimalistic in its sparseness of notes, it is very rich in texture and atmosphere.
"Chukhung" starts after a segue of a field recording of rain, and presents one of the few uses of any percussive sounds on the album. A periodic hollow-wooden-sounding thing plays an ascending and descending sequence of notes through the whole track, with other rhythms and sounds filling in around it. As a catalog of sounds, there are: the wooden thing, an associated bass tone that goes with it, several layers of synth sounds, a floating acoustic guitar, and a strange scraping sound. These are all accompanied by overtones and echoes that rise from the foreground elements like wisps of smoke into the atmosphere surrounding them.
"The Things I Tell You" sets up two repeating mid-range notes and a subtle bass hum that all revolve around the listener on the soundstage. Their positions are out of phase with each other, so they give the impression of following each other around their orbit in your head. The wispy echoes from these are separate in soundstage position from their notes; I can't put my finger on why this is important, but it's always struck me as an unusual detail. The first of a few vocal samples scattered throughout the album appears, which is from Twin Peaks. More synth layers join, giving the impression of being "busy," if that word can be applied to such subtle music. It ends with a field recording of... a glacier. These things look like monumental unchanging chunks of ice, but you can hear it creaking as it moves.
"Times When I Know You'll Be Sad" is as close to a "song" as we get in the collection. We get an acoustic guitar melody with the title words sung repeatedly with subtle echoes in the background. It's a short interlude that leads into one of the darker tracks.
"Hyperborea" has a menacing sound to it, with a dangerous-sounding bass drone and strange cacophonous sounds on top of it. There's a long and mysterious recitation, again from Twin Peaks. The words can be found here. The dreamlike nature of the recitation matches the music, which never really resolves its sense of foreboding.
"Kobresia" relieves us with a much lighter sound. If "Hyperborea" is twilight, "Kobresia" is a sunny afternoon. Various pastoral field recordings float through, there is an acoustic guitar, the sound of a Russian telepath speaking, some radio noise, and various other elements.
"Antennaria" returns us to a more foreboding atmosphere, though not as menacing as "Hyperborea" was. Among what are now familiar melodic elements for Substrata we find what sound like reversed instrumental scrapes. The sound of this track is less rich than the others, but it still intrigues.
"Uva-Ursi" is another interlude with very light percussion in the background. We haven't left the foreboding atmosphere yet, with discordant acoustic guitar on top of repeated vocal sounds. Oddly, it starts and ends with the very pleasant sound of water running and birds singing. The contrast is disconcerting.
The water sound leads us into Substrata's harshest moments with "The Sphere of No Form". A strange processed or artificial wind blows through what sounds like a cave, and an oboe-like whine comes in from a distance. Loud, discordant stabs slice through the space, with the harshest textures to be found anywhere on the album. It's grating and disturbing, but sets us up for a great transition. Near the end, the stabs disappear and some of the sweetest sounds we will hear come in on top of the returned oboe. The stabs return, but somehow the two sound at peace with one another.
A bell signals the transition into "Silene", the coda of the album. The atmosphere is now lighter, but still misty. Slow melodies drift through the fog, with one crunchy element keeping our attention. The final moments of Substrata bring back the field recording of the glacier from before.
Biosphere has constructed an album that is a metaphor for all of that physical power slowly pushing tons of ice toward the sea. "Substrata" is a perfect title for this collection of music with such deep layering and solid construction.
Note: the link to Substrata above includes the extra music released for the reprint; the original album is just the first 11 tracks, ending with "Silene".
The Story
Over the years, I have gotten into what I consider weirder and weirder music. First, back in about 1991, I had bought mostly stuff like Best of Blondie, a bunch (but not all yet) of the Moody Blues albums, and other assorted rock; but usually stuff that leaned toward atmospherics. One of my early electronic favorites, Yello – One Second, is quite a good album, and I still like to listen to it occasionally. Despite being electronic music, it often has a Latin vibe to it. Here's one track from it, "Moon On Ice". Their terribly famous "Oh Yeah" is also on there.
Around 1995, a friend of mine (Maynard!) sent me a tape of Orbital – Snivilization. I was not into Techno yet, and it took me quite a few listens to get into this. Maynard warned me about it; he said, "This will sound really repetitive. But the music is in a different place than you're used to finding it." So I gave it a chance. I listened to it, and wasn't impressed or repulsed. So I kept trying. Maybe on the 30th time through it, in the car (my wife's Accord, near the University of Iowa Dental Building), "Science Friction" caught my ear, and so began my deeper journey into electronic music.
Later, around 1997, I found The Orb – Orbvs Terrarvm. This is a sprawling epic of Ambient Techno/Dub with very strange textures and very slowly-changing soundscapes. I'm lucky to have found this; my wife found it in a record store on the listening stand (Orblivion had just been released), and bought it for me because she thought I'd like it. That's probably based on my liking of Enigma – MCMXC a.d.
During the coming years, I became aware that such a thing as "zero-beat ambient" existed. I've always been interested in rhythm, having grown up on Henry Mancini music, so I assumed I would never like such a thing.
Then I came across Biosphere. I was browsing someone's shared iTunes directory at work (Acclaim Cheltenham), looking at genres. I saw a track called "Baby Satellite", and its genre was listed as "Dream". I wondered what that would sound like, and I loved it. I managed to get this file from him the day Acclaim shut down. Ordinarily I buy all my music to support the artists, but this one is unavailable. So I'm lucky I narfed the file.
I came to find out this was a remix of a track from an early masterpiece of Ambient Techno, 1991's Microgravity. Orbital (soon to become masters of the genre) was still recording on cassette tapes at the time. So I got a legit copy of Microgravity because it had been reissued. Reading up on the artist, I found out he is responsible for Substrata, one of the finest Ambient albums of the 90s. It is entirely beatless, with only hints of percussion in one or two tracks.
On Microgravity was CloudWalker II, a beatless track. It's quite cool. This along with the very atmospheric vibe on the album convinced me that if anyone could make a beatless album that I would like, it was Biosphere.
So I got Substrata, and over many, many listens I came to love it.
The Review
It's hard to approach a work that has so much written about it, so I'll just give my personal impressions of what makes Substrata such a good listen. When I introduce it to people who aren't used to this kind of music, I ask them to give it the "15-minute test". 15 minutes is enough to get a few minutes into the third full track after the introduction. It was at this point in my first listen that I was unsure what I thought of the music, _but I wanted to know where the artist would go with it._ I was intrigued enough to finish it and come back for more.
The introduction ("As the Sun Kissed the Horizon") is a short field recording taken somewhere near a highway and a school. You can hear traffic and children playing in the distance. What ties it together is the drone of what sounds like a single-engine airplane passing by. Everything is so quiet, that it invites the listener to take in every little nuance of the audio. The hiss of tires on the road, the roar of a semi-truck, and the slow movement of the plane across the soundscape, with the accompanying change in pitch due to the Doppler Effect. The kind of attention needed to draw out the details in this track will help perceive the subtle details in the tracks that follow.
Now that we're in the proper frame of mind, the music starts in earnest. In Poa Alpina, we're presented with Substrata's generally misty atmosphere, and a 4-note melody floating and echoing above several layers of rich synth and string backgrounds. While this music is minimalistic in its sparseness of notes, it is very rich in texture and atmosphere.
"Chukhung" starts after a segue of a field recording of rain, and presents one of the few uses of any percussive sounds on the album. A periodic hollow-wooden-sounding thing plays an ascending and descending sequence of notes through the whole track, with other rhythms and sounds filling in around it. As a catalog of sounds, there are: the wooden thing, an associated bass tone that goes with it, several layers of synth sounds, a floating acoustic guitar, and a strange scraping sound. These are all accompanied by overtones and echoes that rise from the foreground elements like wisps of smoke into the atmosphere surrounding them.
"The Things I Tell You" sets up two repeating mid-range notes and a subtle bass hum that all revolve around the listener on the soundstage. Their positions are out of phase with each other, so they give the impression of following each other around their orbit in your head. The wispy echoes from these are separate in soundstage position from their notes; I can't put my finger on why this is important, but it's always struck me as an unusual detail. The first of a few vocal samples scattered throughout the album appears, which is from Twin Peaks. More synth layers join, giving the impression of being "busy," if that word can be applied to such subtle music. It ends with a field recording of... a glacier. These things look like monumental unchanging chunks of ice, but you can hear it creaking as it moves.
"Times When I Know You'll Be Sad" is as close to a "song" as we get in the collection. We get an acoustic guitar melody with the title words sung repeatedly with subtle echoes in the background. It's a short interlude that leads into one of the darker tracks.
"Hyperborea" has a menacing sound to it, with a dangerous-sounding bass drone and strange cacophonous sounds on top of it. There's a long and mysterious recitation, again from Twin Peaks. The words can be found here. The dreamlike nature of the recitation matches the music, which never really resolves its sense of foreboding.
"Kobresia" relieves us with a much lighter sound. If "Hyperborea" is twilight, "Kobresia" is a sunny afternoon. Various pastoral field recordings float through, there is an acoustic guitar, the sound of a Russian telepath speaking, some radio noise, and various other elements.
"Antennaria" returns us to a more foreboding atmosphere, though not as menacing as "Hyperborea" was. Among what are now familiar melodic elements for Substrata we find what sound like reversed instrumental scrapes. The sound of this track is less rich than the others, but it still intrigues.
"Uva-Ursi" is another interlude with very light percussion in the background. We haven't left the foreboding atmosphere yet, with discordant acoustic guitar on top of repeated vocal sounds. Oddly, it starts and ends with the very pleasant sound of water running and birds singing. The contrast is disconcerting.
The water sound leads us into Substrata's harshest moments with "The Sphere of No Form". A strange processed or artificial wind blows through what sounds like a cave, and an oboe-like whine comes in from a distance. Loud, discordant stabs slice through the space, with the harshest textures to be found anywhere on the album. It's grating and disturbing, but sets us up for a great transition. Near the end, the stabs disappear and some of the sweetest sounds we will hear come in on top of the returned oboe. The stabs return, but somehow the two sound at peace with one another.
A bell signals the transition into "Silene", the coda of the album. The atmosphere is now lighter, but still misty. Slow melodies drift through the fog, with one crunchy element keeping our attention. The final moments of Substrata bring back the field recording of the glacier from before.
Biosphere has constructed an album that is a metaphor for all of that physical power slowly pushing tons of ice toward the sea. "Substrata" is a perfect title for this collection of music with such deep layering and solid construction.
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