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Gas

While I was working in a music store in downtown Stockholm, we would often receive CDs without a category in our database. These were the "bastard" artists. The Melvins, Gonzales and Antipop Consortium were also such artists. Sometimes my job was to just sit there and listen and try to figure out where the hell these artists should be placed. Should it go in the electronica section? Jazz? Hip hop? Where? This task enabled me to discover so many interesting artists it would take a whole day to list them all. However, the album that has made the most profound impression on me back then was when I put Gas' Königsforst in the store's cheap CD player.

Even with the lack of bass in the speakers, I could tell this was something for me. It was ambient, very minimal but had this incredibly thick sound which smothered you as soon as it reached your eardrums... It sounded HUGE, bigger than life even. I was already mesmerized, my mind drifting so far away into this ambient sonic molasses I was forgetting to do my job. And just when I was about to snap out of it... in came the beat! A deep pulsating beast, this distant yet ubiquitous 4/4 "thump" (which would have been more at home on any house record than here - and yet there it was!) boosted the already hypnotizing effect this music had on me. Somehow these two contrasting elements managed to be in complete harmony (or should I say osmosis?) and turned this into some of the most sublime ambient music I had heard until then. At this point, I simply couldn't bring myself to stop the music and put on the next CD. Co-workers had a "what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you" attitude and I got strange looks when I said I thought this was great! It goes without saying that I bought the album on the very same day and brought it home to dig deeper and discover it's mysteries. I was hooked so a few days later I ordered the other three (Pop had just come out) through Cheap CDs. Except for the first album, Gas, all of Wolfgang Voigt's albums under this name have been in regular rotation on my CD player or iPod. Unique and stunning music to say the least.

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