Bardspec Hydrogen

BardSpec is the Ambient project / band from Enslaved composer/ guitarist Ivar Bjørnson. Having launched at Roadburn in 2015, BardSpec has since evolved into a fully fledged band, with Steve Austin on guitars/effects, David Hall presenting the live visual aspect of the project, with the layout created by Josh Graham (Soundgarden, Neurosis, IIVII, etc.)
BardSpec combines stirring, hallucinatory synth-sounds with mercurial guitar effects and hypnotic rhythms that navigate illusory landscapes. Field recordings, and other found-sounds also drift and evaporate into the ether. Working intuitively with these elements and with sharpened senses, attuned to inner impulses, this is immersive music, that can exist anywhere, and anytime within the minds of the listener.
Whilst BardSpec might essentially be the same brain and personality making the music, compared to Enslaved, it is a widely different entity. Thematically and sonically, BardSpec is about minimizing, subtracting and meditating upon the simplest essence of “things”; the single points: exemplified through the song titles, like “Bone”, “Salt” and so on, the basic elements and foundations that make up the whole. There is an element of "space" in the music, and the artwork, as a representation of the inner workings of the mind and the subconscious.
Inspired by the German masters Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schultze, Conrad Schnitzler as well as contemporary ambient music like Norwegian one-man-band Biosphere and abstract modern electronic music like When (Norwegian also), as well as the electronic/industrial-driven metal like Godflesh.