Bleep

Following a self-titled debut on Mille Plateaux, Wolfgang Voigt initiated a trilogy of albums that would cement his GAS project as one of the forerunners in ambient and minimal techno. Born in Köln in 1961, Voigt has an intimate relationship with the forests surrounding the city, which have become key characters not only in GAS’ rainbow of album covers but in the dazzling textures, hypnotic rhythms, and enigmatic allure unfolding over each track’s seemingly neverending runtime. His music is a merging of nature and techno, ancient and modern, classical and electronic.

The classic triptych starts with the slasher-esque atmosphere of Zauberberg in 1997. Referencing Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain as well as evoking an arcane otherworld all of its own, this album lays the foundations for what would come to characterise the GAS project: shimmering soundscapes of smoked out string samples, submerged kick drums buried in the foliage, the air crackling with electricity. Zauberberg is the darkest chapter within the GAS story, all at once elegiac, euphoric, and chilling.

1998’s Königsforst takes us to the deepest point of Voigt’s hometown forests, unravelling the heart of the project and perhaps getting closest to traditional notions of ambient and dub techno. Where the dance music of the 90s sped up and hit heavier, GAS was an invitation to slow down and revel in the perfectly chimed orchestral arrangements blended into multiple layers of brittle, blurry, thick textures. Its minimal music diffused into maximum space, emerging into the clearing of the lysergic woodland depicted on 2000’s pop with more discernible melodies and thumps dissolved into lush, humid atmospheres. Many tracks here are weightless ambiences left to hang in the air, wet with dew and ending in one of Voigt’s starkest dancefloor propulsions on ‘Pop 7’.

Noted as in conversation with the likes of Kiasmos, Sunn O))), and The Caretaker, GAS is imagined as a singularity of the club and the forest, with these records and their ethos permeating the furthest reaches of public consciousness.