Published
Wed, Apr 16, 2008, 06:00
- Wolfgang Voigt’s seminal ambient work as Gas is about to be entirely reissued on Kompakt and Raster-Noton.
Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project is to be entirely reissued in CD, LP and book form.
The most ambitious, enigmatic and sonically beautiful of the many projects of Kompakt label head Voigt, Gas combined fin-de-siècle Austro-German orchestral music with modern processing and kickdrums to produce an intoxicating vision of classical-ambient-techno back in the nineties. A pioneering figure in Cologne techno, Voigt has produced a dizzying amount of music under innumerable aliases, yet all are united by an interest in the alchemical properties of sampling and a ubiquitous 4/4 thud. Early Mike Ink productions re-imagined UK acid from a German gnarz perspective, M:I:5 and Wassermann paired reverse samples with glam rock and invented shaffel, and Studio 1 remains some of the most barren minimal techno ever produced. Gas, however, represents Voigt’s most definitive artistic statement.
Originally released on Mille Plateaux throughout the mid nineties, the four long-out-of-print Gas albums, Gas, Zauberberg, Konigsforst and Pop, are to be re-issued on Kompakt, available mid-May 2008. Brought together on four compact discs in a book-bound casing and as a strictly limited double vinyl version (which will include an exclusive art print), Gas - Nah un Fern promises to allow a new generation of listeners to get lost in Voigt’s psychedelic forests.
Simultaneously, art/music collective Raster-Noton will publish 'GAS', representing the visual side of Gas. The accompanying CD will include tracks from Raster-Noton’s 20' to 2000 series, with additional unreleased tracks and GAS loops.
The Gas 'Nah un Fern' 4CD boxset is out on Kompakt on May 26, 2008. Wolfgang Voigt's 'Gas' also arrives on Raster-Noton on the same day.