- It takes a lot to get me out of the house these days, and while the line-up of c/o Pop festival boasted some heavy hitters—Ellen Allien, Sascha Dive, Moderat and Ricardo Villalobos, to name just a few—it was only the double-header of Wolfgang Voigt performing as Gas and a Theo Parrish DJ set that coaxed me to Cologne.
The night began with Voigt's debut presentation of his most famous project before a hometown audience. Whereas last year's Barcelona show filled Antoni Gaudí's Park Güell, his first time in Cologne featured a more monolithic setting—though not quite an austere one. The few of us who arrived punctually watched the staff of the Cinedom multiplex lug bags of trash out of Theater 9, where a screening of Public Enemies had just finished. No marble columns here, just black material covering the walls and a massive, gently curving screen.
Photo credit: festival c/o pop
The program began late, but gracefully. The lights dimmed, a hum of distortion crackled from the theater speakers, and Voigt strutted past the screen to take a seat behind his Mac. The set opened with what I believe was the first track from Zauberberg, a beatless provocation to deeply inhale the moment. The projected video accompaniment depicted slowly revolving, color-filtered images of mossy evergreens—not unlike the album covers or, of course, the woods on the outskirts of Cologne. As with the music, the clearly identifiable objects were minute background details, hidden behind a hazy, too-close foreground that suggested clouds seen from an airplane window, bacteria examined under a microscope and satellite photos of a supernova.
Every crowd harbors a whistler, and ours brought us back to earth during the third piece. Voigt's reaction passed from startled to perturbed to vaguely amused. The visuals, meanwhile, shifted from lush, spacious scenes to grids of spindly detail shots. At times, the video veered perilously toward screensaver territory, but at its best it achieved a sort of ominous tranquility. And the music? The approximately hour-long program mainly pulled from the last three proper Gas albums, but also included material released on last year's Raster-Noton disc. The tracks were virtually indistinguishable from the album versions, but this felt less like a performance than a revered body of music converted (rather smoothly) to spectacle. Finally, the word "GAS," in the familiar font, emerged and filled the screen, the music eased to a stop and the lights came on.
Photo credit: Tobias Vollmer
Though it seemed like an appropriate end to the evening, I already had Theo Parrish on the brain, and made for the jam-packed Gloria club. Parrish began his lengthy set with a disorienting, heavily tweaked rinse of Erykah Badu's "Telephone," and then set into a storming mix of funk, soul, techno and even hip-hop and dance hall. The deep house icon didn't spin much that screamed "house," and I recognized almost nothing, though I'm convinced I heard a Mike Huckaby track, and was definitely pleased to hear Skip Jackson's "Micro Wave Boogie."
In contrast to the near-motionless Voigt, Parrish was demonstrative in the extreme, his wild eyes and swinging arms seemingly electrified by the music. He didn't finesse transitions, but plunged headlong into the new energy each record brought. Initially, harder techno got the biggest reactions. Parrish gladly responded with more, testing the crowd with jerkier and more abrasive tracks. By early morning, though, funk was handling the heavy lifting, Parrish animating a respectable number of diehards with some Tower of Power as I scooped up my coat and left to catch my morning train.