GAS COMES TO NORTH AMERICA!

16-03-09 // by Jon

Type // Photo

Wolfgang Voigt will be bringing his acclaimed live GAS show to North America for the first time ever. This will mark his first North American live performance in over a decade and promises to be a rare opportunity to see him performing live abroad.

The first even will be on Wednesday, May 27th presented by our friends in Montreal, MUTEK who also happen to be celebrating their 10th Anniversary. As with every edition, MUTEK's initial lineup announcement is impeccible boasting the likes of MODERAT, MATHEW JONSON vs. DANDY JACK, AKUFEN, APPLEBLIM and a rare live performance from CYCLO aka Ryoji Ikeda & Carsten Nicolai.

New Yorkers will be in for a treat as WORDLESS MUSIC will present GAS at the prestigious MILLER THEATRE @ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY on Friday, 29 May.

May 27 - Montreal @ Monument National/MUTEK

May 29 - New York City, Miller Theatre at Columbia University/Wordless Music Series

Official Info:

Wolfgang Voigt, influential electronic music artist of world acclaim and founder of the renownend Kompakt label, will perform his legendary ambient project GAS live in North America for the first time ever.

Voigt will present GAS in the form of a specially conceived audio-visual performance, created in collaboration with video artist Petra Hollenbach.

In conjunction with a stream of hypnotic images derived from Voigt's own photography, GAS live will take the audience on a metaphysical journey through the German forrest and its ambivalent mythological inventory.

With his four GAS albums, released between 1996 and 2000, Voigt created a new, previously unheard musical aesthetic: sounds inspired by German romantic music are interwoven into fluid, ephemeral stuctures that evoke transient spaces and plunge the listener into an ecstatic experience. In 2008 Kompakt re-released all four groundbreaking albums in a CD-box entitled "Nah Und Fern". At the same time Raster-Noton published a book that presents the visual aspect of the comprehensive gas project with a selection of Voigts photography, that also serves as base material for the visual concept of the GAS live show.

The concert is one of very few live appearances of Voigt after 12 years of abstinence, while he was focussing on developing Kompakt as an important hub for independent electronic music.

Wolfgang Voigt has been one of the key figures of German electronic music since the late 1980s. Known for his prolific output under various pseudonyms like Mike Ink, Blei, Love Inc. or Grungerman, the Cologne based artist has been formative for the German techno movement in the early and mid 90ties and the broad range of electronic musicians that followed. Voigt's work within the labels Kompakt and Profan both founded and run by him stands for the carefull and successfully balancing of artist's need for independency, a critical view on zeitgeist and the necessity of economical efficiency.