As promised four weeks ago the completion of the Gas Nah Und Fern box set with album 3 and 4
Gas ! .. one of the many aliasses of Wolfgang Voigt the cofounder of one of the best loved labels in dance Kompakt.. In the latter part of the nineties he produced 4 albums under the moniker Gas on the Mille Plateaux label, these have been rereleased on his own label and beautifully packaged as a 4 disc set, you should get it here at amazon uk 15,99 = 18,5 euro for a 4 album box set great price for this classic. To call it just ambient is to belittle it. It is full of rich texture, colour, layers of depth - epic electronica - containing a universe of sound, people, Life, the Universe, and Everything indeed.
Most of the time there is no clear musical progression in a Gas track, as Voigt seems to be more interested in exploring depth of the stereo field, utilizing subtle shifts in sound. Because music under the Gas alias lacks any trace of orthodox melody or chord change many would not describe it as musical. However, the sources of Voigt's samples are often of musical origin, encapsulating "old pop record stuff" as well as classical music such as Richard Wagner and Arnold Schoenberg
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Königsforst picks up where the previous Gas album, Zauberberg (1997), left off. The contents are less important than the effect, however, as this is ambient techno at its most minimal, with a tone that is tranquil yet dark, ominous, and haunting. Moreover, the spare ambience of the music belies its power. Turn this music up loud on a high-quality sound system with a lot of bass kick, and Königsforst is downright trance-inducing, especially since the majority of the tracks carry on for over ten minutes with only slight variation over the course of their duration.
00 Gas - Königsforst (99, 144mb)
01 Königsforst 1 (09:49)
02 Königsforst 2 (13:56)
03 Königsforst 3 (09:01)
04 Königsforst 4 (06:32)
05 Königsforst 5 (15:19)
06 Königsforst 6 (10:20)
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On Pop, Voight switches things up. Gone are the gloomy samples, and the signature bass heartbeat appears on but two of these seven long tracks. Instead of containing linear motion, Pop is an exercise in sonic texture. Much of Pop takes this timbre to its logical extreme, backgrounding things like melody and rhythm in favor of pure sound. Yet the mood lightens, as has the sound palette. It's akin to stepping into bright sunlight, with high-contrast colors replacing shaded hues. An effervescent, shimmering album, the focus is on the tangled, gloriously disorienting pleasures within.
Gas - Pop (00, 139mb)
01 Pop 1 (05:30)
02 Pop 2 (08:36)
03 Pop 3 (07:26)
04 Pop 4 (09:28)
05 Pop 5 (10:51)
06 Pop 6 (09:18)
07 Pop 7 (15:02)
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