Wolfgang Voigt – Die Fledermaus (Kompakt 12″, out now)
Review by David Hemingway.
Wolfgang Voigt is almost heroic in his commitment to the functional “thud thud thud” of techno. Nevertheless, the prolific German producer makes a distinctive music related to his homeland and its musical forms such as schlager (German popular song) and volksmusik (folkloric music). His recordings as Blei reference brass band music, polka and marches while the title of his Gas album, Königsforst, refers to the forest on the right bank of the Rhine: for Voigt, the German mountains and forests that he would visit as a child, with his parents, are an explicit influence. Under his Gas alter ego, the co-owner of the Kompakt imprint appropriated sound passages from classical sources and mutated these samples beyond recognition. For his latest twelve, Voigt looks to the evening skies for inspiration and sound-sources – Die Fledermaus 1 & Die Fledermaus 2 samples the sound of bats (as heard through bat detectors), coalescing the chiropteran’s curious clicks ‘n’ ticks ‘n’ tocks ‘n’ smacks, into wonky Teutonic techno. Die Fledermaus is curious and fascinating.