Wolfgang Voigt's GAS Project: the Poll

yeah, 7 was the one that stood out to me on first listen as well. looking forward to spending a lot of time with this, although i do see how some of tuomas' criticisms might apply

there's a continuity that makes it feel like one long piece.. several tracks share the same tonal center as others, like the way track 6 sets up track 7 - chord/pitch-wise. Track 6 stood out to me as the oddest, with its percussive bits and piano. The album has a subtle airiness about it that gels nicely with the listening environment.

Yeah, those percussive clangs on track 6 really stood out for me too, they're so unlike anything else on any Gas album. I think I could even hear marimbas there?

I have to say this album sounded better on the second listen, when I played it at high volume on my surround speakers instead of listening it on headphones while walking. Still not a fan of the short beatless tracks tho.

I think it's overall a more relaxing record than Konigsforst or Zauberberg.. I can't put those albums on and just zone out, like with Pop or Narkopop.. lots of passive, horizontal, half-conscious listening over the last several days.. it's more of a truly ambient thing, where you don't have to lock into it or fully engage.

recently re-watched seasons 2 + 3 of Homeland, there's a recurring musical motif that's eerily similar to that of track 3 on Konigsforst.. grew a sort of weird attachment to the show. Pop V is one of my favorite Gas tracks, and Pop was the only Gas album I knew for the longest while until discovering the other albums. Konigsforst has been sounding so ultra lately, just all of that popping detail, texture, and melodic content.. it's tough to beat.

loving this on first listen, I'm up to the martial drums on track 5. almost a Laibach vibe going on. I'm fine with the "shorter" tracks workign as interludes to these long pieces, I also thought the bass drum on track 2 was very satisfying

10 is really something. the clearness of the samples on the record is jarring, compared to his previous work. you can play tracks from the s/t, zauberberg and konigsforst on shuffle and they'll more or less sound of a kind, and pop takes similar ideas in a new direction. but narkopop wouldn't work in that playlist - the samples are too clear, the attack on the samples is shorter, clearheaded. it's not a criticism, just an observation.

Listening to this very loudly on big speakers is definitely the way to go - there's some serious low end on Narkopop 2, and I was totally unprepared for that huge swathe of La Mer when it emerged.

i have only listened to this a tiny bit, never making it the whole way through without someone at work rudely rousing me from my deep gas slumber, but it is so interesting even just as a kind of control group through which to think about the other gas records, i think. i listen to pop every day, sometimes, quite often in that sort of unflattering way in which Gas - Pop (FULL ALBUM) youtube is just a convenient tool solving various problems of noise or sleep or attention, &c, but still it so clearly means something & feels kind of like a place, to me, i like pop 4 the most but i think of the first two songs, which are always still this bewitching midpoint between nature & electronics & the things both sets of sounds elicit in you, to play it for the specific sensation of a kind of difficult to parse emotion: even with konigsforst i still think i am not far away from a sort of established implied mood of like foreboding synthesizer associations, like people talking about this record & mulholland drive. i am immediately bummed out hearing this to not find the same forest soup, to have something that is more recognizably parts, & then a minute into a song something will emerge from a synth & i'll feel the tension again, the same feeling of it becoming something i can't read, don't quite understand. any kind of unburied drum feels sort of crass because i just long for more time trying to find myself in the pop forest, but so far it is growing on me & i get the tractor beam feeling mentioned upthread instead.

<3

i listen to this furious to have been parachuted into the wrong gas world

hate to break it to you guys but according to the tracklist of this ra mix, i am wolfgang voigt https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=570

lol texas

original or Method Man-featuring version?

roll eyes emoji

original or Method Man-featuring version?

― boxedjoy, Monday, May 1, 2017 3:30 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jesus i had completely forgotten about this

no seams between tracks on the CD version, it does work best as one full serving, with all of its variations cohering into one streamlined piece (tonally). Narkopop is definitely one of the best sounding GAS albums, airy and humid, it's ultra-pleasant. I'm sure the vinyl product is top notch but it's nice to not have to change sides every 15 or so minutes.

lol @ residentadvisor comment thread

Whoa is that tracklist the actual tracklist? That is a ballsy move.

Kompakt dude obsessed with shiny 80s pop shocker.

not ballsy, just lazy

i think it's great

I usually hate that "something different to what I normally play on the club" bullshit, and it is true that this sounds like a middle aged woman's spotify playlist, however, I enjoyed it more than any other RA podcast in a year or more (with the exception of that disco / italo mix by that Japanese guy).

huh, i missed this

only listening on my laptop at the moment, which cuts out a lot and always makes things sound smoover, but

OH JESUS

it sounds so much waaaaay more narcotic (dur) than a typical gas record, just like an instant ZONK, like a microwave beam, i suspect encephalography was involved at some stage

live show this year was fantastic. i don't know how long it went on for but i was spellbound the whole way through, that whole thing where creeping anxiety is slowly transmuted into joy and wonder and then you slip back into the dark again. my journey home from work is often through some woods in the dark and now narkpop is more often than not the soundtrack to that. it's really had the effect of recallibrating my ears and my emotional response to that environment, especially hearing the wind through the leaves in the treetops as that same static-like hissing, no idea why i hadn't thought of listening to gas in situ before

yes! the show was amazing

Cosign all that, just zoned out and became completely immersed in it.

fuck i guess i gotta buy tickets for here

i hope you like trees!

this album sends you under like nothing else

it's taken me a while to realise just how much I love Gas, and Narkopop has been the deal-sealer, one of my favourite albums for the last few months

So... Bleep lists this as 11 tracks, the last of which is >70min. Is that the vinyl-only track? (In which case, how come the vinyl is "only" a triple if it's 150min?) I'm guessing this is a typo, as the vinyl bonus on Discogs is 16min. And the vinyl is over £50!

CD w/booklet is sold out on Bleep (which might be the only way to get track 11 bundled, as a download, with the CD), so I may go for 11xWAVs and write 1-10 to disc with no pre-gaps (tracks are seamless on the CD release, right?).

presumably that last track is just the album in a single track - Spotify lists it that way as well

Ah, got it. The 71min version is for gapless streaming/burning. So Narkopop 11 really is vinyl-only, not downloadable.

£50 though...

Kompakt has it for €50 so that's about £44... without shipping

this trend of splitting up CD-length albums over as much wax as possible really bugs me

I have made my peace with it wrt the Cavern of Anti-Matter LPs (both triples), but they were £20 each, and pretty satisfying to own on vinyl. Having a bit of a thing at the moment for vintage synths on wax, possibly triggered by digging out Matmos's Supreme Balloon (a mere double LP) again a few weeks ago and marvelling at how that sounded.

But GAS I'd take as full-fat digital.

Many xxps: great post, nickb. I got offered a ticket for the Barbican show but I live in the Shires and am old and said no and oh fuck it.

Album of the year for me.

maybe me as well

RIYL GAS: F.E. Denning

i only started listening to him, uh, last night, but his music reminds me quite a bit of voigt - long, untitled drone-based songs, occasional string pads, effectively establishing a sense of unique space in each song, e

while generally being quite a bit darker in tone.
all of his songs have < 1000 listens on spotify so i don't think he's a household name quite yet, but

goddammit, i didn't mean to submit that yet, but i'll just leave it there. if anyone knows of him or knows any cool tidbits about him or his music i'd love to hear them. i find it to be excellent work music so i expect to be listening quite a bit more this coming year.

Aw, I know him, he is a cool guy :) Him and a whole bunch of Copenhagen jazz guys did a pretty cool Coltrane tribute a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1qs-z-7dJI

wow, that's very unlike his other material i've heard, thanks!

Another new album!

https://www.stereogum.com/1987630/gas-announces-new-album-rausch-watch-a-trailer/video/

whaaat

fuck yeah

Oh nice! I’m seeing him next week, hopefully he’ll play some stuff on the new one!

Nice. Does he do his own album art?

i'm pretty sure it's his own photography.

nice to see the new one is half the price of narkopop, not sure why that one was quite so expensive