Release Date: July 5, 2011
To the casual listener, a band like Biosphere might seem redundant and their music might seem played out. No straightforward traditional melodic ideas? No vocals? Verses? Choruses? Biosphere’s N-Plants is a half-boring, half-intriguing trip through ambient soundscapes mixed with traditional techno beats and eerie sampled sounds from old movies.
One could look at the song titles and album cover of Biosphere’s N-Plants and pick songs at random and say, “I bet this one has some repetitive drum beat and equally repetitive keyboards that go throughout the whole song” and be correct without taking a listen.
The biosphere on earth is considered all its organic beings and their inorganic surroundings. With this definition, it seems that the band’s music might be a combination of all genres, instruments and styles mixed with sound samples found in nature and our material world like car engines or waterfalls. Instead, N-Plants is a repetitive loop of sounds that aren’t as thought-provoking or mind-inducing when compared to other ambient projects.
The same production style and electronic keyboard instruments were used on each song. Maybe it isn’t fair to judge N-Plants as music and it is fairer to look at it for what it is: ambient music that is meant not so much to be listened to, but to function as background noise that you put on while studying or doing some house cleaning.
When you compare what Biosphere has done on N-Plants to any Bibio album to date, it falls very short. When you listen to the three or four samples on N-Plants, they are seemingly random clips of people talking in a foreign language and it doesn’t make you wonder anything more about the music. There isn’t any mystery to this music, even in the realm of ambient.
You can hear exactly what Biosphere is doing on each track. It is hard for you to forget that you’re listening to an album and get lost in it; you’re constantly aware that there is an electronic drum beat and some keys playing at all times. It is very apparent from the start that this music was not challenging for the artist to make.
N-Plants is the musical equivalent of creating squares, lines and circles in Photoshop, doing nothing more with it and calling it art.
If you are a fan of ambient music and looking for something to hold you over, this album might not do the trick. If you’re looking for something to put on while you’re reading because you’re getting a bit used to your favorite Album Leaf or Bibio album, this might make you appreciate them a bit more and see them for what they really are.
Biosphere – N-Plants Tracklist:
- “Sendai-1”
- “Shika-1”
- “Joyo”
- “Ikata-1”
- “Monju-1”
- “Genkai-1”
- “Oi-1”
- “Monju-2”
- “Fujiko”
