Album of the Week: Burger/Ink, ‘Las Vegas 2010’

Album of the Week: Burger/Ink, ‘Las Vegas 2010’

16 July, 2010 | 6.04AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: album of the week, jorg burger, kompakt, mike ink, the bionaut, the modernist, wolfgang voigt

This week’s album of the week is a stone classic, one that’s been unavailable for far too long: Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger‘s ‘Las Vegas’. The pair released the record (as Burger/Ink) way back in 1996; it came out on the EMI subsidiary Harvest, of all places—making the Cologne techno icons unlikely labelmates of Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, among others. Perhaps more importantly, in the U.S. it was licensed by the indie-rock giant Matador, thus providing many Americans with their first taste of Cologne techno.

After having been out of print for many years, Kompakt has re-mastered the LP and re-issued it as the first edition of their new Kompakt Klassiks label.

‘Avalon’

A little like the films of Wim Wenders, ‘Las Vegas’ is an investigation of the romance of the American open road, a mythos that has its epitome in the hyperreal architecture of Las Vegas. (The musicians even reference Wenders in the track title, ‘Love Is the Drug (Paris, Texas)’.)

‘Love Is the Drug (Paris, Texas)’

Burger/Ink’s vision of Vegas is a starry-eyed one: instead of dry desert heat, cold neon and grizzled retirees, they conjure one of the most supple, ripe, and rounded sounds in the history of the Kompakt canon. It’s enough to make you wonder if they had ever even visited Vegas—probably not, but it’s precisely that dreamy, idealized quality that makes the record so wonderful.

‘Milk & Honey’

Somewhat unusually for Cologne techno, the album is suffused in rich, feathery guitar sounds and sparkling chimes; the whole thing shimmers like a heat mirage.

‘Flesh & Blood’

Of course, this being a Cologne record, there’s an ever-present dub techno pulse, which anchors productions that otherwise spread out like a fine mist.

‘Elvism’

‘Las Vegas’ predates the launch of Kompakt by two years—when it was released, Voigt (aka Mike Ink) was still deep in projects like Gas, Auftrieb, and the Profan label, while Bürger was pursuing his unique style of pop-ambient electronica under the Modernist and Bionaut aliases. But you can hear the genesis of many Kompakt records (particularly the work of Dettinger and the Field) in tracks like ‘Twelve Miles High’, with its stuttering samples shuffling off towards the horizon.

‘Twelve Miles High’

There’s a healthy sense of humor to the record, perhaps even moreso in hindsight: one suspects that when they wrote ‘Bring Trance Back (To Las Vegas)’, they weren’t anticipating the success that DJs like Tiesto would ultimately enjoy at Sin City’s high-rolling mega-clubs. “Trance”, here, is a far more abstract term, suggestive of spacing out behind the wheel, listening to the hum of the highway through the open window, drugged by dry winds and asphalt.

‘Bring Trance Back (To Las Vegas)’

One of my favorite songs on the album has always been ‘Do the Strand’, a shuffling 4/4 groove threaded through gently filtered chords that jostle like pearls on a string.

‘Do the Strand’

Ultimately, though, this record isn’t made for cherry-picking tracks from: it’s one of those albums that deserves (demands, even) to be listened to back to front, over and over again; it’s the perfect road-trip substitute for those of us with no time, no gas money, or a cautious eye towards our carbon footprint. Reissuing ‘Las Vegas’, Kompakt hit the jackpot, and we can all enjoy the payout.

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