GAS at The Barbican

GAS - Konigforst #5

For a while it seemed like the first 3 GAS albums were the holy grails of ambient music. Then Kompakt started selling them as MP3s. Then came the boxset. And on Friday, Wolfgang Voigt played a live show as GAS in a cinema at The Barbican. None of the (relative) heightened awareness of GAS' influence on current music has made it any less elusive though. We know what it is - long drones, made of stretched orchestral sounds, the crackle of vinyl and the distant thud of trance - why does it sound as mercurial, as indefinable as this?
The GAS albums are massive deals to me. They can sound academic, and just like that, they can sound extraordinarily evocative, but evocative of things I can't really comprehend. The music is cold, but inexplicably natural. Cinematic, but abstract. The visuals behind Voigt followed the music - small traces of colour shrouded by dense thorns, trees obscuring the moon, constantly moving, never escaping the woods.
As the show came to an end, that thud of trance became deafening and the word 'GAS' burned itself onto the screen, like a horror film title sequence. It was finally here, and then it was gone. I use the word a lot, but, y'know, awesome.