| Patashnik | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Original Apollo cover | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1994 | |||
| Genre | Ambient, ambient house | |||
| Length | 66:04 | |||
| Label | Apollo Origo Sound | |||
| Producer | Geir Jenssen | |||
| Biosphere chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
Patashnik is the second album by ambient house musician Biosphere. It was originally released in 1994 by Origo Sound in Norway and by Apollo in the rest of the world. Its track "Novelty Waves" was used for a 1995 Levi's ad campaign.
According to Jenssen, the word patashnik is allegedly Russian cosmonaut slang for "a traveler" [2] or "a goner", a cosmonaut who didn't return from a space mission because his security cable disengaged and he was lost in space. [3] [4] There appears to be no such word in contemporary Russian, but such surnames do exist, [5] and it still sheds light on Jenssen's intent with the title.
Through Patashnik, Jenssen continued to explore his ambient-house stylings to an even greater extent. Patashnik contained the first hints of the reduction in beat-driven song structure that would mark later Biosphere releases. Unlike the first album, Patashnik was quickly picked up by a comparatively large international audience, which brought Biosphere greater recognition. A music video made for the track "The Shield" was often played on MTV's Chill Out Zone show.
In 1995, Levi Strauss & Co. was searching for a new angle to add to their television advertisement campaign (which up to that point had never featured electronic music), and they decided to use the uptempo track "Novelty Waves" from Patashnik. Shortly thereafter, "Novelty Waves" was released as a single (featuring remixes by various other artists), and managed to chart in several countries. Although Jenssen never regretted his approval for use of the track, he also never sought this kind of fame and subsequently turned down various requests by his record company and peers to collaborate with well-known techno and drum 'n bass artists or to create a follow-up album in the same style.
In 2007, Patashnik was reissued by Beatservice Records with a new cover and the same contents.
In addition to the title track, two other track titles are space references: "Mir", referring to the Mir space station, and "SETI Project", referring to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
All tracks written by Geir Jenssen, except "Botanical Dimensions" (written by Karsten Brustad, arranged and remixed by Geir Jenssen). "The Shield" was commissioned by Concerts Norway. 2007 reissue: With "Thanks to Helge Gaarder (1953–2004)"; CD photography and design by Hanne Brochmann. [6]
As is usual in Biosphere's music, the album incorporates several known or obscure speech samples:
Mir was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.
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Geir Aule Jenssen is a Norwegian electronic musician and composer who records as Biosphere. A resident of Tromsø within the Arctic Circle, Jenssen is well known for ambient and ambient house pieces, often inspired by Arctic or mountain settings, and his use of loops and peculiar samples from science fiction and natural sources. His 1997 album Substrata was voted by the users of the Hyperreal.org website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album. He has also composed several film scores.
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The Shutov Assembly is the thirteenth solo studio album by British musician Brian Eno, released on 10 November 1992 on Warner. One of Eno's ambient albums, it was reissued in 2014 with a second disc with bonus tracks.
Substrata is the third studio album by Norwegian electronic musician Geir Jenssen under the stage name Biosphere, released in 1997 by All Saints Records.
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The Tromsø techno scene is the origin of many of Norway's most important artists within electronic music. The internationally best-known names are Röyksopp, Biosphere and Bel Canto.
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