Gas

Nah Und Fern | Kompakt
By DEVIN KING  |  June 3, 2008
4.0 4.0 Stars
gasinside2.jpg
Kompakt label head Wolfgang Voigt re-releases the four discs of his Gas project — long hailed as some of the best albums in ambient techno — along with a double LP of extended material. This release — English translation “Near and Far” — brings to mind the two phrases that should be attached to any box set: out of print and fucking massive. The albums in their original forms sell for goofy ducats on-line, and it’s easy to see why — whereas most ambient techno smells like bong water and Taco Bell and sounds like some dude twisting a knob for 20 minutes, Voigt samples composers like Wagner, Berg, and Schoenberg and lets the string swells and horn lines pulsate slowly against one another. A buried bass thump keeps time. The music mimics waiting outside a club for a taxi; muted tracks from the dance floor mix with the sound systems of the passing cars and displace you from the city into Voigt’s regular visual reference — the forest. I have never more enjoyed listening to music on public transportation. Part of a genre too often made to be ignored, these Gas albums are intelligent, simple, and strange.
Related: Minimalicious, Various Artists | Pop Ambient, Billy Bragg, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Music Reviews,  More more >
| More

Most Popular
Blogs
 More: Phlog  |  Music  |  Film  |  Books  |  Politics  |  Media  |  Election '08  |  Free Speech  |  All Blogs
ARTICLES BY DEVIN KING
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN  |  July 29, 2009
    Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.
  •   SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM  |  May 27, 2009
    The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.
  •   THE MOVING PICTURES  |  May 12, 2009
    If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.
  •   VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS  |  May 06, 2009
    Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.
  •   PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT  |  April 14, 2009
    Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."

 See all articles by: DEVIN KING

LATEST SLIDESHOWS

All Slideshows