GAS
Nah und Fern
(Kompakt)
By Erik Morse
The landmark release of Gas’ four-CD Nah und Fern (Kompakt) might well narrate a secret märchen that begins in the lowlands of the Black Forest, climaxes upon a Harz mountainside and ends in the enchanted mixing board of a Cologne studio.
One of many noms de guerre of Kompakt founder Wolfgang Voigt, Gas represented the extremes of the techno/ambient hybrid pioneered in small continental studios throughout the ’90s and released on hip electronic labels like Mego, Raster-Noton, and Mille Plateaux – Gas’ original record company. The new box set encompasses Gas’ four releases – 1996’s self-titled debut, 1997’s Zauberberg, 1999’s Königsforst and 2000’s Pop – whose sylvan intricacies appreciate from album to album in a spiritual tour of German romanticism and its putative antipode, techne.
But Voigt endeavors to merge these inconsistent paradigms head-on, finding the majority of musical sources for Gas in his collection of classical German genres, including Wagnerian opera, Webernian serialism, and alpine oompah bands, then mutating them through obsessive looping, stretching, and the ever-present bass drum. What is produced is an incredible acoustic environment overflowing with epic grandeur and religious hymnal. “Gas is Hansel and Gretel on acid,” Voigt has said. “…A seemingly endless march through the under woods – and into the discotheque – of an imaginary, nebulous forest.”
A surveillance video set to Gas music.