Kompakt’s Wolfgang Voigt re-releases legendary Gas project

Kompakt’s Wolfgang Voigt re-releases legendary Gas project

12 July, 2008 | 9.01AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog
• Written by: Lee Smith

For some of us, the Gas crisis is finally over.

We’re not talking about the global rise in fuel costs, though—we’re talking about the long-awaited re-release of Kompakt founder Wolfgang Voigt’s seminal experimental techno albums, which he produced in the ‘90s under his Gas moniker.

Throughout the mid-’90s, Voigt was prodigiously busy, releasing literally hundreds of records under nearly as many aliases, spanning mental acid techno (as Mike Ink), queasy waltz-house (as Wasserman), and bare-bones minimalism (as Studio 1).

For many, however, his most memorable contribution to the era came in the form of his four Gas LPs, released at the time on esteemed electronica imprint Mlle Plateaux.

While most practitioners of the ambient subgenre were busy ingesting magic mushrooms and coming up with ever more ludicrous sample-delic collages of whale noises, panpipes, and the occasional obscure snippet of speech, Gas turned ‘chillout’ on its head by creating complex, often sinister tracks that lurked in the strange hinterland between the techno dancefloor and the boundless realms of experimentalism.

For many years, the albums have been out of print, with Gas fanatics willing to shell out small fortunes for the rare originals.

Thankfully for the rest of us, Voigt has finally decided it’s time that the Gas project was made available again, with ‘Nah und Fern’ compiling almost every cut from the original four albums in one set.

Newer Kompakt fans—and indeed newer fans of techno in general—may find that the 26 tracks available on the re-release come as a bit of a sonic shock.

Produced in pre-Ableton, pre-’minimal’ (as we know it these days) times, Voigt’s complex style is not always the easiest of listening, utilizing off-kilter atmospherics and unsettling layers of static to forge what numerous electronica connoisseurs have cited as true masterpieces of modern music.

And while it’s a bit much to suggest that there’s an ambient revolution in the works, we think that these re-released tracks signal a renewed interest in the potential of techno to reach way beyond the restrictive rules of the dancefloor.

So sit back, close your eyes, and remember—life’s a gas.

• (0) Comments
• (321) Views
• Get 'Nah Und Fern' on Beatport