Gas - Zauberberg
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CD Details
Artist: GasEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1998-03-03
Music Label: Efa Imports
Soundtracks:
- Zauberberg
- Zauberberg
- Zauberberg
- Zauberberg
- Zauberberg
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- Zauberberg
Music reviews of Zauberberg
Music Review: Zauberberg
Rating: 5 Stars
Frightening. Disturbing. Haunting. Foreboding. Eerie. Shimmering. Dazzling. This music can only be written about in terms of adjectives, and each one of them speaks to the music's ability to stun, entrance, and emotionally move. I don't know how Gas (aka Wolfgang Voigt) creates his magic, and, frankly, I don't want to. All I know is that Zauberberg sounds unlike anything that came before it; certainly nothing that Brian Eno, the father of ambient music, could have ever predicted.
Zauberberg is brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed. These seven tracks are comprised of half-there strings, a warm bed of electronic tones, and just a hint of crackling textures as if emanating from a cobweb-covered record player. Some of the songs feature an incessant 50 Hz bass thump--nothing overbearing, just a mild "thump, thump, thump" more dreamy than clubby. Melodies subtly shift, moving to the foreground and then to the background like apparitions. And as all the elements come together, it's flawless, creating (as anyone who has heard this will tell you) something altogether grander and more spiritual than music itself.
Part of what makes Zauberberg so potent is its consistency. Unlike Gas's first self-titled CD, which was quite beautiful but all over the place, Zauberberg chooses a theme and sticks to it, fleshing it out until it can go no further. Over the course of seven tracks Gas painstakingly constructs a world of ominousness, mystery and darkness, equal parts menacing and magical. Track number 2 (all are untitled) shows Gas at his paranoid best: cellos, violins and horns creep quietly from the speakers, as if portending some great, awful climax. Of course, there is no climax to speak of (we are talking about ambient music, after all), yet it sustains our interest and suspense for all of its ambitious, 15-minute running length.
Zauberberg is not completely shrouded in darkness, however. The first and the last tracks bookend the venture with long waves of liquefied strings that could almost be described as sunny. Track 1's radiant brightness calms us before the second track slips us into a darkened forest not unlike the blood-red one pictured on the cover. At the end of our spellbinding journey, the last track brings us back into the sun for 9 minutes (which, surprisingly, isn't nearly enough time) of pure, angelic comfort.
I've heard this album referred to as "Wagnerian" more than once. That's seems like a moot point, since Zauberberg uses Wagner's actual material, but it doesn't retain Wagner's spirit, which is key. The harmonies may be similar, but the universe Gas presents us is too understated, too subtly powerful to be likened to anything by the famous German composer. Zauberberg is, more than anything else, an experience. We begin in one place, are thrown into the unfamiliar, explore all the facets of the frightening unknown, and end comfortably where we began, though always with a keener sense of the world around us.
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