GAS 'GAS' 3xLP

There had, of course, been signs of what was to come. Back in 1995, Voigt essayed the first Gas release, a slender, yet remarkable four-track EP, Modern. Its centre label featured a reduced symbol – an overhead or lamp light, switched on, its glow radiaOng outwards in four bold black lines – a perfect representaOon of the Oght, stylised ambient electronic pop contained on that 12”. A few curious compilaOon tracks were floaOng around, too, for Mille Plateaux’s ModulaOon & TransformaOon and Electric Ladyland series. If you were aienOve enough, you could tell something was up.

But nothing quite prepared us for the languorous, effervescing loops and regular-like- clockwork beats that Voigt folded together on GAS. Its six long tracks, all unOtled, neither begin nor end but hazily fade into earshot, vibrate majesOcally in your cochlea for fiPeen-or-so minutes – some a bit shorter, some longer – and then meander away, reading the mise-en-scène for the next example of Voigt’s driP and dream logic to unfold. The material is referenOal in the most distant way, and you can sense only the most evanescent of ghostly presences, haunOng these six composiOons.

GAS feels, also, like a more pliable hint at what’s to come, as the GAS concept really solidified on its successor, 1997’s Zauberberg, and reach its apotheosis on Königsforst and Pop. Those three albums share a very similar paleie – blurred, hazy samples, oPen of classical music, stacked and cross-thatched across a muted 4/4 thud. GAS, then, is an outlier of sorts: it’s more expansive in its remit, lighter in its mood, perhaps more fleet of foot. This, of course, is part of its charm.

In clearing space for Voigt, by preparing the terrain, GAS sits both at the edge of the forest, and at the verge of an expansive, wide-eyed future; one where GAS would become truly eternal.