STUDIO 1 COLLECTION
(KOMPAKT)
Following last year’s monumental Gas boxed set, Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt continues to revisit his illustrious past. Under the alias Studio 1, Voigt self-released 10 colour-coded 12” singles between November 1995 and March 1997. And whereas GAS espoused a very dense, romantic kind of ambient 4×4, Voigt’s Studio 1 were pure snap-to-grid minimal techno, and – alongside Moritz von Oswald’s productions as Maurizio – set the template for modern day minimal.
While Voigt is pleased by the massive success of the genre he helped precipitate, he has proved keen in interviews to distinguish between the “experimental art” of his own 1990s productions and the “pill music for DJs” of much of what now passes for ‘minimal’. Listening to these tracks you can see his point. Superficially much alike, repeated listens reveal each track to be a sound world of intriguing depth and complexity, where stasis and propulsion become delightfully blurred. Like the best of Jamaica’s Studio One dubplates, Voigt adds by subtracting, with the result that the smallest change in rhythm becomes magnified in effect. An essential purchase.
Rating: 8 / Justin Toland