Hia* | Biosphere – Polar Sequences

A collaboration that's more than the sum of its parts sees the eerie atmospheric haze of Biosphere merge seamlessly with the 'harmonic rhythms' of HIA to create something unlike either artist's signature sound. The resulting music is massively ahead of its time, making it a timeless recording. As others have said pressing is good and the bonus track on side d is interesting but not essential.

Poor remaster, I suggest sticking with the original Beyond CD.

The loudness war had already struck by 2003, with this remaster greatly boosting the loudness and lowering the dynamic range of this beautiful music. Stick with the original Beyond CD.

This is one of my favorite albums from Geir (or Bobby, for that matter), and what an absolute mind-melter of a release it is. I can't explain why, but those samples of cracking ice, water dripping off of icicles, the gears of the Gondola machine cranking away just takes me there, every time. Even the random vacationing Americans (?) caught on tape was an interesting, welcome juxtaposition.

So happy to have this pressed up, finally! Both sides of my vinyl look and sound ace.

Listening to the first minutes of Cimmerian Shaft i thought this was gonna be a masterpiece of a Dark Ambient album, but i was partially wrong. Yes, the tracks are in general a good pleasure, but overall, excluding some of them, they are quite anonymous. As for the first track, it reaches this anonimity later on, whereas many of the others are somewhat forgettable (perhaps the classical style of Higher Intelligence Agency took over and in this case left little to no space for atmosphere). Only 3 tracks are extremely valuable, the ones that sound as i wished they would, i'm talking about White Lightning, Meltwater and the closing Fjellheisen, these are worth the entire album. The first starts with a magnificent, horror-like soundscape and keeps on going slowly mutating into more conventional Ambient sounds, resulting in a balanced review between what i just said about anonimity and beauty. While White Lightning doesn't go much higher than that, Meltwater and Fjellheisen give a sensational feeling conveyed by the gorgeous Field Recording that makes up their structure, with almost no human hand interference, leaving Nature speaking by itself. The sound of crackling ice above turbulent water of Meltwater is magnificent, it feels so near that the sensation of being about to be swallowed by the icy waters is strong. Finally the Spoken Word merged with the dark atmospheres of Fjellheisen is the perfect close up, the most memorable track among all. The closing track is almost completely composed by that Spoken Word i talked about, and the effect is cold and warm at the same time, while some times the sound of a mechanical engine (maybe an elevator) transforming and merging with a monotonous Dark Ambient composition is an artistic touch i experienced only a few times. The result is an utterly raw sound that sticks to your skin and doesn't leave you even when the album listening is long finished. So, in the end, i have to say that this is half a masterpiece for the above reasons, obviously the fact that 2 great artists joined forces and came to a compromise limits the pure expressio as i am not listening to a pure Dark Ambient album but to an hybrid that, obviously, sounds weird in some passages.

This is my first Ambient album and I guess, there is no better way to get introduced to this kind of music and its spirit. A little too much talking on the last track, though.

Sometimes you take the best parts of two artists and they create something even more impressive! Polar Sequences still sounds great today. It's as much as you could hope when two artists come together and bring their separate styles to combine this effectively.

Has anybody else found the pressing to be mildly off centre on side b,and to a lesser extent side c?

Absolute stunning piece of music.
Quality pressing with good dynamics, zero noises an beautiful artwork.
The bonus track on side D is welcome, but not essential.
Well done, Geir!!

The 2018 remastered version of this great album is garbage. The remastering is poor, reducing the dynamic range to increase the loudness of the music (DR meter average 14 for the original release, 8 for the remaster). The bonus track is also quite bad, not worth listening to.