Daily Archive

“I would climb the highest mountain, I would run through the field, only to be with yooooooou” U2

“Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from yoooooooou” Diana Ross

“Unwanted side effects while taking [high altitude medicine] Diamox include drowsiness, fatigue, or a dizzy lightheaded feeling…in some cases, individuals may suffer depression, pains in the area of the kidneys, and bloody or black tarry stooooooooooools” Geir Jenssen

Those words are printed on the cover of Geir Jenssen’s singular contribution to the field of music about mountains.  After the success of his Substrata album, he took all his royalties and blew them on a trip to Tibet in 2001 to climb the world’s sixth highest peak, Cho Oyu.  Not one to miss an opportunity, he armed himself with a minidisc recorder, microphone and shortwave radio.  Along with, I would assume, a load of mountaineering stuff like crampons and ropes, and whatever else they use.  I don’t know.  Hooks.  Warm clothes.  Sherpas. Anti-gravity devices.  And Diamox.

Five years later, he has finally opted to release the results – under his own name, to distinguish these “field recordings” from the digital explorations he has released as Biosphere.   Not that there is a lack of thematic continuity however – these pieces are in a sense an expedition to the very core of his work, both in terms of his use of such recordings to form the basis of a track (much of Dropsonde is based on these source materials), and in terms of the isolationist mood that hermetically seals you inside his albums.  With Cho Oyo, all else is stripped away, leaving you naked, shivering and very alone.

The diary that accompanies the disc is gripping, nerveless and at times surreal stuff, as Geir recounts the frosty group dynamics, intense physical trauma (headaches, sickness, dizziness, freezing cold; no tarry stools as Geir elected to forego the Diamox), and occasional misguided attempts to tune back in to the rest of the world - hearing reports of planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, a War of the Worlds style hoax was assumed. 

The recordings bring the words and pictures to life so vividly, tracking as they do the trip from the Tibetan border through basecamp, advanced basecamp, camps at 6400m, 6800m, 7100m, and 7500m before reaching the summit itself.  The compelling organic rhythms of civilisation Geir finds in Zhangmu and Tingri - local instrumentation, a cassette of traditional Tibetan music - are quickly left behind on the drive to the first camp, replaced with an eerie stillness in which the smallest of sounds become massively portentuous, at times coalescing into tiny patterns (the yak bells distort in a manner akin to the powerful ringing tones of the guitar on John Fahey’s Red Cross).  A sense of loneliness and disorientation increases as Geir ascends through the rarified atmosphere, sometimes the only sounds are of laboured breathing and a biting wind scouring the surface; this complete disconnection is broken only by the music and plane chatter picked up on the radio.  At times you feel like you are the one who should be taking the altitude sickness tablets.

Geir’s reasons for punishing himself thus are conspicuously absent from his diary.  However in doing so, he has scaled more than one peak – to the besting of the world’s sixth highest mountain can be added the fashioning of possibly his finest artistic statement.  Buy it, and buy a big coat too - you are going to need it.

Listen to an mp3 of “Palung - A Yak Caravan Is Coming” here
Read Geir’s diary and see some amazing photos of the expedition here