(originally published June 23, 2010)
By 1997, when Insomnia came out, I was head-deep into electronic music, and I bought the soundtrack without much caring about the movie itself. I must have come across it in one of the used record stores scattered around D.C. (Flying Saucer, DCCD, 12” Dance Records), because there’s no way I could have afforded the Norwegian import. Not on a bookseller/part-time DJ’s salary, at least.
I’ve been a fan of Geir Janssen ever since he was a part of the band Bel Canto (with ethereal chanteuse Anneli Drecker and cute, bespectacled Nils Johansen). I first discovered Bel Canto on Teletunes, with their video for “Birds of Passage,” and being a sucker for moody European synth-pop with gossamer singers, quickly tracked their first two albums which—luckily for me—were released in the US. Janssen’s solo work under the moniker Biosphere, however, was slightly more difficult to find: his first two albums were only released in Austria on the famed ambient label, Apollo.
What I knew of ambient music when I was younger was what I’d heard on Hearts of Space. I sat beside my Dad’s stereo at midnight on Saturday, my finger hovering above the ‘record’ button on the cassette deck. Even though I enjoyed it, much of what I heard struck me as hokey—like I should have been weaving dreamcatchers as I listened. I felt the same way about soundtracks, as well: stripped of their emotional context, soundtracks seemed somewhat thin.
But by the time I hit college, ambient music had taken a different place in my life. I’d outgrown industrial music (no longer angry) and mainstream dance music (overexposure from work). What I wanted—after an afternoon of shilling books and then a night of playing David Morales and Peter Rauhofer remixes—was to be transported. Out of my studio apartment, out of Dupont Circle and its lazy Susan of entertainments. When I put my CD of Insomnia into the player, I let the sound sink me deep into Norway. The music was sparse and icy: refracted piano chords, low electronic throbs. I wondered: what was happening in the film at that moment? Who were those ghostly faces on the cover? Why the tagline “No rest for the wicked”? It was a soundtrack not for any film in particular, but the one projected on the ceiling as I lie on my futon, hands behind my head.
Yesterday, on the summer solstice, I rewatched Insomnia. NPR had broadcast a story about the Midnight Sun Parade in Nome, Alaska, and I imagined the all-night (-day?) parties starting up in Scandinavia. Pagans jumping over bonfires, beaches awash with vitamin D-seekers. Sleepless Swedish detectives getting trapped in Norway and having hallucinations about their murdered partners. Upstairs, on the third floor ‘man-den,’ I reclined on the couch in the sweltering heat. The A/C blew intermittently. Matthew was out watering the garden, trying to save his plants.
I put on Ruxpin’s album Avalon and remembered why I listened to ambient music: it sets your mind adrift. By the time “In Form of a Bird I Meet My Creator” came on, I had unmoored from the blistering Delaware summer and, amidst sunshine, slept blissfully.