Gas – Narkopop (Box Set)

Label: Kompakt – KOMPAKT 371
Format: 3 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Artbook
Country: Germany
Released: Apr 21, 2017
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical, Techno, Ambient
Condition: Near Mint (CD Missing)

The decision to release a boxset of GAS’s discography a matter of months before the first new material for 17 years seemed rooted to the music’s soul. Playing with the ideas of time so central to Wolfgang Voigt’s most introspective project, it ties new album Narkopop to its predecessors, reinforcing the sense that the loops and floating kicks which first oozed out of speakers on the 1996 debut have actually been playing all along, it’s just in the last few years we’ve all tuned back into them.

At the same time, as you go deeper, the ease with which Narkopop can now be compared with its predecessors brings home how much has changed – in the music and the world it’s being received. As “Narkopop 1” unfolds and slowly fills the stereo field, it seems at once familiar and alien. The string samples warped so much only their faded echoes linger are back, but a synthetic dust seems to be glistening off their surface. From the outside the loops are their usual smooth, unfurling selves, yet as you focus in they become increasingly fractured, cracked and damaged.

1. Narkopop 1
2. Narkopop 2
3. Narkopop 3
4. Narkopop 4
5. Narkopop 5
6. Narkopop 6
7. Narkopop 7
8. Narkopop 8
9. Narkopop 9
10. Narkopop 10
11. Narkopop 11