Birmingham Frequencies (1999) ...
A collaboration between Norwegian Biosphere (Geir Jenssen) and Bobby Bird (HIA) of Birmingham, this is the second part of a two-part project. Ambient music from a multimedia show presented on top of the Rotunda building (a landmark of Birmingham, England)...
Birmingham frequencies ...
"Polar Sequences and Birmingham
Frequencies are two parts of a same project. Polar Sequences, released
in 1996, was recorded two years earlier, during Tromso’s Polar Music
Festival. Tromso, hometown of Biosphere’s Geir Jenssen, is situated 70
degrees north, above the Arctic Circle, in Norway.
In 1995, the
organisers of the festival commissioned Geir Jenssen and Higher
Intelligence Agency’s Bobby Bird, a series of three concerts, using
environmental sounds recorded in the area. The concerts were given on
top of a mountain, where the audience was brought to in turn by cable
car.
The second part of this project was put together by Bird and
Jenssen, using a similar approach, this time set in Bobby Bird’s native
Birmingham. The chosen venue was on the twelfth floor of the Rotunda,
situated in the heart of the city. The one off event also featured
videos and digital images, as well as a café and one of the best views
over Birmingham.
The music created for the two events is very similar
in form, the two artists creating a slow moving, chilled soundtrack.
But where Polar Sequences feels very natural, using sounds of snow and
melting ice, the only human interaction being the cable car, Birmingham
Frequencies is definitely more urban. Voices of children playing in a
park or a pelican crossing alarm are amongst the sounds used as the
basis for the creation. These two records are complementary, and Jenssen
and Bird both bring their own creativity and technology to a very
interesting project. Absolutely unmissable." ...
ambientmusic.co.uk ...
"Birmingham Frequencies finds its home in the modern city, a
meshing of styles that both artists have played with up until the
release of this collaboration, but colored by a very different
soundscape than either have attempted to explore in the past. Switching
from formless ambient drawls and splashes of synth noise interspersed
with lo-fi field recordings, beat oriented incidental samples, and
acoustic instruments penetrating the hazy synthetic world, Birmingham Frequencies
is impressionist sound design taken to new heights of evocative power.
It is the sonic expression of isolation in an environment that is
saturated with faces that have no meaning and places that aren't homes.
Somehow, these two artists have managed to create a collage of sounds
that, even without contextual foundations, coalesce into auditory
representations of images and likenesses that are paradoxically and
simultaneously relatable and foreign all at once." ... sputnikmusic.com ...
Now Wait For Last Year is a masterpiece of understated electronic elegance. Like the hallucinatory drug JJ-180 from the Philip K. Dick novel which the album is named after, these songs have the ability to bend time, only in this case Caroline has utilized a synthesizer for the purpose of warping temporal perceptions. No heavy handed tricks or tomfoolery seem to have been used in achieving this effect. With her delicate touch, she created a pleasing batch of songs perfect for rainy evening meditations... brainwashed.com ...
