Gas
Pop


4.5
superb

Review

by mywarmblood USER (2 Reviews)
November 13th, 2011 | 382 replies


Release Date: 2000 | Tracklist

Review Summary: This kind of music not only paints an intricate and beautiful landscape: it is one, immersive, lively and livable.

Pop is both an ocean and a forest. The loops are waves, each submerging you deeper and deeper underwater where you drift away into unconsciousness. The textures are the forest; dense yet airy, claustrophobic yet expansive, always atmospheric. Observe the album cover (incidentally a forest): it's all one vibrant color, yet within it there are branches and leaves and little nuances.

Of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, Pop has the freshest and liveliest production, rendering it quite different from Königsforst and Zauberberg's dark, muffled dream worlds. Voigt incorporates recordings of flowing rivers and swirlier, more blissful orchestra samples. It literally sounds like you're high in the forest Voigt wanted you to envision.

Is this techno? All tracks are beatless ambient soundscapes except for tracks 4 and 7, which utilize the trademark 4/4 kick drum found in previous Gas releases. These two, along with the symphonic opener, are the most enchanting tracks on Pop. That's not to say the other tracks are useless: track 2, a slower, pitched-down version of the first track, only serves to push you closer to the looping melody. The deep atmospheric tracks 3 and 5 drone like ethereal vacuums, and the sweeping beatless loop in track 6 prepares you for the 14-minute techno barrage of the closer, which uses that same hypnotic loop.

Pop carries the mystifying quality of sounding not like its loops took five minutes to make, but like the loops are breathing and moving and expanding, even though they are simply looping over and over. There are so many layers and so many different shades to the sounds that it's hard to pinpoint when exactly the melody loops over again, even though you know it does. Each loop seems to express itself more exuberantly and hypnotize you more and more as the music unfolds. It's not easy to create repetition this straightforward in music without tiring the listener, but Voigt achieves that sort of repetition.

Pop is both an impenetrable wall of sound and a single cloud carrying you through a clear blue sky. For some it may present itself as the former: an overwhelming, neverending nightmare of field recordings piled layer upon layer. For others it can do the opposite: smoothly take you into a daydream in which you barely notice its minimal message. Yet it's these contrasting qualities that create the adventurously lush yet tranquilly repeating mass of sounds we aim to hear. Will the listener work hard at making sense of all the layered hiss, or will the music work hard at enveloping the listener in paradise? There are these two types of people in this forest.


user ratings (303)
4.1
excellent

Comments:Add a Comment 
mywarmblood
November 13th 2011


27 Comments


my first review in over a year...

Ulsufyring
November 13th 2011


1748 Comments


sounds interesting

wabbit
November 13th 2011


7059 Comments


it's a really cool album.


robertsona either really loves this or really hates it

robertsona
Staff Reviewer
November 13th 2011


28224 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

idk why you would say that but i dont really have much of an opinion on it, it's pretty boring but sort of nice.

wabbit
November 13th 2011


7059 Comments


maybe it wasn't you

gabethepiratesquid
November 13th 2011


4522 Comments


This album seems like something you'd listen to if you really like the last two Stars of the Lid albums and want something along those lines.

MisterTornado
November 14th 2011


4507 Comments


This needed a review

seedofnothing
December 25th 2011


3422 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

m/







seedofnothing
December 30th 2011


3422 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

I have gas.

Cells
December 30th 2011


1875 Comments


Pretty good review.

pizzamachine
December 30th 2011


27728 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

Pretty good album.

seedofnothing
December 30th 2011


3422 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

Solid review and album owns. It's very delicate and should be listened at as high a volume and possible. Preferably 80% max. Weed always helps too.

controlled
October 14th 2012


660 Comments


wonderful find. suprised it's not rated higher, but that only stems from my ignorance i'd suppose

StarlessAnd
October 14th 2012


443 Comments


or the fact that this isnt all that great

YankeeDudel
March 8th 2013


9342 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Driftin and spliffin

scissorlocked
August 25th 2013


3538 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

nice album indeed

Wadlez
December 11th 2013


5019 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

These soundscapes!!

MisterTornado
March 23rd 2014


4507 Comments


the expanded artwork here is unparalleled

Wadlez
March 23rd 2014


5019 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Something special

Cygnatti
March 23rd 2014


36154 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

whoa



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