It's not hyperbole to suggest that Wolfgang Voigt's album POP, under the pseudonym GAS, is one of the greatest — if not the best — ambient albums of the past 20 years. Released in 2000, POP is a masterpiece of symphonic bliss that set a new standard for beatless electronic music.
On Wednesday, Voigt and his record label Kompakt announced the return of GAS after 17 years. A new album, NARKOPOP, is due out April 21. You can pre-order it here, and listen to a clip of the record below.
NARKOPOP, Voigt's fifth album under the GAS moniker, will get a deluxe 24-page vinyl release and a hardcover CD album. His previous four GAS recordings — Zauberberg (1997), Königsforst (1998), Oktember (1999) and POP — were re-released in 2016 as a four-disc/10-LP boxset, cheekily titled BOX.
While a new GAS album took nearly 20 years, Voigt himself never went away. The Kompakt co-founder, whose roots still reside in minimal techno, released dozens of singles and a handful of albums in years since POP's release.
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