Customer Reviews

Pop

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gas is the ambient alter-ego of Wolfgang Voigt (aka Mike Ink). While his two past albums as Gas (Zauberberg and Konigforst) were brooding and dark, the new one Pop is much more radiant. It breathes hope throughout its duration, with its light, airy washes of tones and drones and the signature pulsing undercurrent. Gas is a very distinctly new kind of ambient music, bridging the gap between pure atmosphere (Eno, Satie) and the so-called "ambient techno" of the early nineties.

Probably the most interesting record I have heard in a long time. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in ambient music, simply because it is primarily a work of texture rather than melodies or grooves, (see also Brian Enos Music for Airports) In ot her words, Pop has a tactile quality that gives rise to a different kind of listening experience. On the surface, Pop is a pretty smooth ride. Think: a string section of a huge symphony orchestra playing the same chord repeatedly, forming a sweeping expanse of noise. Think: Wagner with severe short-term memory loss. All the tracks on this album are just variations of one theme: beat, no beat, slowed-down, speeded-up, different instruments coming in, but always the same steady orchestral pulse (and white noise?), which makes this good to have on while you are working, for example. Repeated listening, however, reveals superstructural details - harmonies, fragments of melody, a constantly evolving sound picture. Gas, incidentally, is one of German electro nica pioneer Wolfgang Voigts (Mike Ink) aliases .Vorsprung durch teknik, indeed.

This album is insanely good. I bought it in 12th grade because it was on the staff picks at Tower Records. It's fantastic. If you have any tasks you want to get done, this fills out the rest of your brain and lets you get to work while giving you just a tiny bit of propulsion half way through to keep going. It's like a zen fountain.

The final track on this album will slowly reveal layer after layer. Drive at night and listen. Out of the depths some layers will appear and you'll be unable to tell whether or not they are being produced in the disk or only in your own head. (Is that a voice, chanting?) This is German engineering at its finest, and ambient at its most textured and hypnotic.

Some GAS disks sound like a rave is down the hall but you are in the dark closet trippng on powders with your head in your knees. This one has less 4-4 beats and is a good CD to dream to. It will require at lest 5 or 6 times of playback to hear all the layers and is well worth the time spent.

While the first two GAS releases "modern" (Profan 008) and "Gas" (Mille Plateaux 32) are more abstract and turn into mind-alteringly static physical entities when concentrated on, what with the non-harmonic tuning scales and absolutely synthetic sound (albeit rooted in samples of strings/guitars et al), the later works, now more perceivably just slowing down and looping short string samples on end, at times tend to sound like German Volksmusik/ Schlager (which is intended - hence some of WV's other projects). All have in common that there may be melodies, but no tunes; bass and rhythm, yet not in common pop terms but static and droning.

Of the 3.5 albums of the later period (a new one is due - one GAS every 14 months!) "Pop" is easiest and relaxant to listen: less kitschy and pathetic than "Zauberberg", less chaotic than the "Koenigsforst" versions, it is warmly transparent, soothing warm rinning water, although not necessarily harmonic; it requires some listening into it (as all GAS works do, but this is not the one most worthy of the time).