Label: Kompakt
Catalog#: KOMPAKT CD 66
Format: 4 x CD
Box Set
Country: Germany
Released: 05 Jun 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno, Ambient

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BODIES OF WORK IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC IS FINALLY AVAILABLE IN ONE INCREDIBLE PACKAGE - PRETTY MUCH THE ENTIRE GAS DISCOGRAPHY IS COMPILED ACROSS 4 CD'S CLOCKING IN AT ALMOST 5 HOURS OF THE MOST IMMERSIVE MUSIC YOU'LL EVER HAVE THE PLEASURE OF HEARING. THINK OF IT AS THE DARKEST DRONES FROM TWIN PEAKS CROSSED WITH BASIC CHANNEL AND ARVO PART FOR A VERY VAGUE IDEA OF THE GENIUS AT WORK HERE* This four-disc retrospective anthologises one of the seminal bodies of work in the recent history of electronic music. Wolfgang Voigt's recordings under the name Gas have gone down in folklore as one of the key ambient/techno/drone touchstones of the nineties, providing the Mille Plateaux imprint with some of its finest ever output, which in certain quarters (namely Boomkat HQ) is regarded as just about as good as it gets. First thing's first, it should be pointed out that 'Nah Und Fern' collects the four principal Gas albums, electing to miss out 1995's Modern EP and other scraps from short-form releases. This should be regarded as a good decision, because the consequent four-part cycle feels very much like its own, self-contained catalogue. The first of these constituents, the eponymous, debut Gas album somehow sounds more current than ever. You can hear the current generation of Kompakt artists striving for the sounds Voigt mapped out 12 years ago, that thunderous bass pulse destabilises the notion that this is ambient music in any passive sense, instead injecting a sense of pace and motion to a music that's otherwise difficult to interpret in any structural sense - and it's certainly far too richly layered and abstract to be filed under the banner of techno along with some of Voigt's other work. 1997's Zauberberg established the Gas language as we currently know it, based around an effulgent blend of samples, noises, treated recordings and clever filtering all locked in place by that stately bass drum pulse. It was this album that started making explicit links between forest imagery and the thicket of sound Voigt concocted, but as signposted by the surreal colour schemes of the album's original sleeve, this is a dream forest - a psychotropic... tropic, with hints towards nightmarish oppression intimated by the deep, dark dissonances that occasionally reach out from the torrent of sound. The last of these albums, 'Pop' takes this forest imagery to its natural conclusion, rendering an environment so verdant and teeming with life you can literally hear it dripping, in all its gooey fertility. Samples of flowing waters intermingle with dense air currents and synthetic landscapes, resulting in a more vivid picture of Voigt's hyper-real forests than perhaps ever before. Pop is probably Voigt's most accessible album, and the record that can most directly be attributed to establishing ground rules for the famed Kompakt Pop Ambient sound. A special mention should be given to 1999's Konigsforst, however. Of all the Gas releases this has to be the most enduring and resonant. Somewhere within that album's configuration of sounds lies a magical balance between neo-romantic orchestration and the more esoteric, electronic ambient elements Voigt brings to the table - and moreover, the individual tracks making up Konigsforst fit together into a single long-form narrative so beautifully, it represents an undeniably special musical voyage. Compiled together in this ineffably wonderful package, and 'lightly' remastered, the Gas catalogue - slightly abridged as it may be - stands as a singular and totemic body of work within the great canon of ambient music. As essential as essential gets.