When German techno artist Wolfgang Voight makes music for the dance floor, he usually goes by Mike Ink, Love, Inc, or M:I:5. Indie rock label whores may remember Voight as one half of Burger/Ink, whose hypnotic Las Vegas was Matador's inaugural electronic release. The ambient side of Voight's personality is revealed by his work as Gas.

Voight suppresses the playful streak he exhibits as Mike Ink when he sits down to make Gas music. Previous releases like Zauberberg and Köenigsforst adhered to a strict formula of sampled symphonic passages (sometimes described as Wagnerian, though they could be from anywhere) swirling atop an incessant 50Hz bass thump. This steady 70-80 bpm bass pulse is the Gas trademark. Though it seems a bit comical at first (and definitely would have turned me off a few years ago), the bass anchor becomes mesmerizing over the course of an album, lending the intricate string patterns needed thrust and clarity.

On Pop, Voight switches things up. Gone are the gloomy samples, and the signature bass heartbeat appears on but two of these seven long tracks. Instead of containing linear motion, Pop is an exercise in sonic texture. UK music scribe Simon Reynolds pointed out that electronic music labeled "IDM" frequently has a marked fascination with timbre. Much of Pop takes this idea to its logical extreme, backgrounding things like melody and rhythm in favor of pure sound.

I read an essay about Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies that compared the famous piano pieces, all very similar in melody and structure, to viewing a sculpture from different angles. Just as a few steps to the left gives insight into a visual work, identical musical elements can be shuffled slightly to provide a deeper look. I'm reminded of this analogy when I hear the first three tracks on Pop (no titles, natch). Each of these contains a warm synthesizer drone that wobbles gently between two pitches and several layers of fuzzy electronic distortion that trigger images of wind and trickling water, but slight tweaks in the arrangement of each track casts light on the construction of individual sounds.

Together, these carefully placed packets of noise blend into an immersing, downright amniotic environment, especially at sufficient volume. The delicate synthesized drones will veer too close to new age music for some, but fans of Eno's dreamiest ambient work and Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II will find Pop easy to curl up in. The fourth track finally brings the familiar bass drum, paired with a loop of a gorgeous ringing sound that could be a sampled electric guitar (similar in tone to passages of Burger/Ink's Las Vegas). The fifth cut is pure sonic velvet, the layered drone radiating a palpable warmth. I wouldn't have complained if this track had been stretched to the length of a CD; sadly, it lasts a mere eleven minutes.

But while it begins cozy, uneasiness begins to creep into Pop just after the halfway point. By the sixth track, the mood becomes downright eerie. Though many of the textures from the first three tracks are present, the mix feels all wrong, with the synth punched up to ominous levels, and the temperature seems to plummet. Here, the cover art of Pop seems to come into play.

The photographs in the liner notes consist of extreme close-ups of tree branches. At this vantage point, the twigs take on another quality, and we get a small glimpse of the worlds that exists between knots on a twig. This change in perspective reminds me of the opening montage in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, where the camera moves from the placid long shots of Lumberton to the guy having a heart attack while watering his lawn down to the horror happening at the microscopic level of the soil. Greater detail makes the world increasing unpleasant.

Similarly, as you move deeper inside the world of Pop, it changes. The closer adds a marshal kick drum (this time complete with hissing high hat) to the previous track's drones, finally fleshing out the threatening scene. It's an unsettling end to a fascinating sound ride, and when it fades out, you'll enjoy the silence with sharpened ears.

-Mark Richard-San