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Demdike Stare’s DDS label kicks off a new series of limited edition 12”s with the return of Shinichi Atobe, offering a slow evolution of his inimitable deep house, finely balanced with a new found sub-heavy bias while unlocking extra space in the upper registers.
Atobe’s third 12” since debuting on Chain Reaction in 2001 marks a subtle but crucial development of his style, leaning towards classically deep, dub house templates. On both sides he adds supple flesh and hypnotic emotive pathos to his stripped formula, resulting in some of the most immediate and enduring work in his canon thus far. It coincidentally also marks a decade since he first graced DDS with his debut album ‘Butterfly Effect’, followed by a tranche of cultishly acclaimed albums in the years since.
On the A-side pearl ‘Ongaku 1’ he steps out with a shimmering take on the effortless gait of M-Series blueprints, as derived from the deepest NYC house, delicately ornamented with cascading levels of detail. Precision-tooled kicks precipitate Prescription-via-Maurizio feathered dub chords, interlaced with a frisson of darker strings and synth melodies for the full goosebump. ‘Dub 6(six)’ on the flip whisks up a psychedelic lattice of arps and synth voices with ruder bass ballast, taking its sweet time before the kicks come to swing the ‘floor deep and wide.
Straight bullets, no messing.
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At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.
Quite the opposite. The album GAS - DER LANGE MARSCH once again invites us to follow the deep sounding bass drum, to give in to its irresistible pull into a psychedelic world of 1000 promises. In the process, the journey leads us past stations of memories sounding from afar, from "Zauberberg" to "Königsforst" and "Pop", from "Oktember" to "Narkopop" and "Rausch", back and forth, now and forever.
Way. Destination. Loop. Forest loop.


Rausch with no name / My beautiful shine / You are the sun / This is where I want to be /
Rausch with no morning / This is where we burn / The Stars sparkle / In a sea of flames /
Horns and fanfares / Fanfares of joy / Fanfares of fear /
The wine we drink through the eyes / The moon pours down at night in waves /
Careful with that axe Eugene / Personal Jesus / No beginning no end /
Eighteenth of Oktember / The night falls / The king comes / The hunt starts /
Freude schöner Götterfunken / The long march through the underwood / Trust me there’s nothing /
Once upon a time there was a bandit / Who loved a prince / That was long ago /
Spring Summer Fall and Gas / There is a train heading to Nowhere /
Drums and Trumpets / Future without mankind / Warm snow / Alles ist gut /
The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head /
Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas /
A clearing / Heavy baggage / Debut in the afterlife / Death has seven cats /
World heritage Rausch / Finally infinite


OKTEMBER is the second EP release under Wolfgang Voigt’s mythical GAS project (it follows "Modern“ on Profan, 1995). The 2 compositions were originally released in 1999 on Mille Plateaux, and then reissued partially in 2016 on GAS “BOX”. OKTEMBER is finally released on Voigt's own label KOMPAKT, pressed on 180 gram vinyl in its original artwork.
This reissue features “Tal ‘90“ (instead of the original A side) – a predecessor to the GAS project originally recorded in 1990 under the alias TAL, it was released as a part of the Pop Ambient 2002 collection. With its sampled strings, horns and guitars, "Tal 90” soundtracks a more uplifting side to what is typically accustomed to being the sound of GAS. The title track “Oktember” is a dense, hypnotic affair that conjures a unique vision of dub techno that few have been able to replicate.
A monumental soundtrack to uncertain times.







2nd wave dub techno staple Stephen Hitchell meets new wave producer Federson in a back ’n forth of timeless originals and versions. San Francisco’s Chris Kelly, aka Federsen’s Alt Dub label hosts this passing of the baton/torch with CV313 and Echospace figure Hitchell a sits 2nd release after the ‘Positive Charge’ EP christened the vessel in earlier ’24. Federsen fronts the session with a smoky, night-driving dub of CV313’s ‘Skycrossing’ in properly classic Maurizio style, especially that scooping bassline, whilst shutting it down with the more air-stepping levity of his dusted congas and distant dub chords to ‘Skyway’. CV313’s original ‘Skycrossing’ places his mastery of constantly shifting, ever the same, dynamic within its unfurling envelopes, alongside a remix of ‘Skyway’ that plunges upward, outward into billowing electro-acoustic dub techno dimensions.




![cv313 - beyond starlit sky [remastered] (12")](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/files/06b3973a-accd-cce8-1f7f-2843f5154504_{width}x.jpg?v=1718894632)






In the body of work of Cologne artist Wolfgang Voigt – who, like few others, has informed, shaped and influenced the world of electronic music with countless different projects since the early 1990s -, GAS stands out in particular as a saturnine sound cosmos based on heavily condensed classic sequences. Even after nearly 20 years, the sound of GAS doesn’t seem to have lost any of its luster, as shown by the commanding success of Kompakt’s fall 2016 re-release of the essential back catalogue as a 10xLP/4xCD box set.
The overwhelming feedback from a loyal international fan community and worldwide media outlets attests once again to the sheer timelessness of GAS. Which is why it will feel like hardly a day has passed since the release of the last official album “Pop” nearly two decades ago, when Wolfgang Voigt resumes this specific creative path with the upcoming new full-length NARKOPOP.
Even in the here and now, the unmistakable vibe of GAS immediately hits home, taking the listener on an otherworldly journey with the very first sounds, drawing him or her into an impervious sonic thicket, down to the depths of rapture and reverie. From wafts of dense symphonic mist emerges a floating and whirling feeling of weightlessness, before the listener steps into an eerily beautiful forest of fantasy, pulled in by the allure of a narcotic bass drum.
While earlier GAS tracks were often based on the hypnotic effects of looping techniques, the 10 new pieces on NARKOPOP unfold their magic in a more entwined manner, sometimes with the sonic might of an entire philharmonic orchestra, sometimes as subtle and fragile as the most delicate branch of a tree with many. A main characteristic of Voigt’s oeuvre, the coalescence of seemingly contradictory stylistic aspects such as harmonious and atonal, concrete and abstract, light and heavy, near and far is also a decisive feature of NARKOPOP.
In accordance with the transgressive spirit of his collective work, Voigt carries the aesthetic conceptions of his music over to the realm of the visual. Based on his abstract forest pictures, the GAS artwork addresses Voigt’s artistic affinity to romanticism and the forest as a place of yearning. For the first time, a closer look at the cover of NARKOPOP reveals signs of architectural fragments which hint at another, maybe parallel world behind Voigt’s forest. Truth is the prettiest illusion.












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