for the first time ever, the book »gas« by wolfgang voigt presents the visual aspect of the comprehensive »gas« project. it is not meant to be a monolithic retrospective of his visual work, but it features a broad spectrum of photographic images taken between 1995 and 1998, showing many different moods and perspectives of wolfgang voigt'Â’s cosmos. what they all have in common, however, is the mystical focus and, seemingly, the blurring of boundaries between lightness and darkness, happiness and depression, kitsch and art, pixels and leaves. and on the enclosed music cd, voigt has opened his treasure chest and presents some well-selected, rare jewels from the very early days (and nights). four of the five tracks have never been released or played before.
in the middle of the 1990Â’s, wolfgang voigt, better known under a great many pseudonyms such as mike ink, studio1 or grungerman, and as the driving force behind the rise of cologne minimal techno, had reached a temporary peak in his career. nevertheless, he never really stopped pursuing and developing his true creative music passion. going back to the 1980s, voigt began working under a self-realized concept he named "blei". taking in the most varied sound models, he began to extract elements from classical, polka, or brass music, and along with electronic pop music and german schlager sounds, he formed a distinguished and unique pop music style that would fit in with the subculture of that time. in the early 1990s, influenced by techno, voigt began to experiment with timpani marches by means of strongly alienated, free-floating string loops. these elegiac tracks, with their lack of a beginning or an end and their intoxicating, smooth and partly amorphous structure, sounded to him like evaporating gas and thus, »gas« music was born. »gas« is the vision of a sonic body between schönberg and kraftwerk, between a french horn and a bass drum. »gas« is wagner goes glam rock, and hansel and gretel on acid. »gas« is there to take you on a seemingly endless march through the underwoods– and into the discoteque –of an imaginary, nebulous forest.
in his music, wolfgang voigt does not create a direct reference to the original sounds and/or the forest itself. he rather tries to reduce the material to its basic aesthetic structure by using different zoom, loop and alienation techniques in order to release it from its original meaning and context. his intention is to create a kind of aesthetic essence, a cave (detail/loop/repetition) where you can get lost. and for all of you who think that this is too much to ingest, please accept this as wonderful music.
catalogue, 128 pages, colour images, cd (unreleased material).
tracklist:
01. der wald - 10:00
02. das moor - 10:46
03. november 89 - 10:33
04. nah und fern - 11:42
05. tal 90 (version) - 12:44
