Wolfgang Voigt (musician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Voigt (2012)

Wolfgang Voigt (* 1961 in Cologne ) is a German artist , music producer and label maker . Voigt is co-founder of the Cologne electronics and technology label Kompakt . In different areas of electronic music he also publishes under label and project names such as Gas , Mike Ink , Profan , Studio 1 , Freiland , Wassermann , Rückverzauberung or Protest .

Life

Wolfgang Voigt is considered one of the most important representatives of the Cologne techno scene and minimal techno in Germany. Together with the musician Jörg Burger ( The Bionaut , The Modernist ) he was influenced by the acid house boom during a stay in London in 1988 . Voigt and Burger then founded the label Trance Atlantic in Belgium . Among his first releases is the Acid record The Dialogue EP , released under the alias Mike Ink . Many of his records from this early period, such as B. Trans Atlantic Excess , Lovely Ugly Brutal World , Rosenkranz , New Jack City and RESPECT are considered classics in the techno scene today.

Together with Burger, Ingmar Koch and Cem Oral , members of the band Air Liquide , Voigt founded the acid techno label Structure in 1991 .

In 1993, together with his brother Reinhard Voigt , Jörg Burger , Jürgen Paape and Michael Mayer , who joined a few months later, he founded the Delirium record store in Cologne , which was later renamed Kompakt and became the cornerstone of the label of the same name .

Also in 1993 Voigt founded the Profan label , on which he published experimental techno and ambient music under a number of pseudonyms. At the same time, many of his publications appeared on domestic and foreign labels. In particular, the records released on the Profan sub-label Studio 1 from 1995 onwards were a style-defining factor for German minimal techno and trend-setting for its own musical development . The musical elements were greatly reduced in an avant-garde manner, with bass drum and bassline as well as percussion elements being used, especially the "click" sounds, which have now become part of the repertoire of minimal techno. Influences of dub were also audible. The ten Studio 1 releases formed a self-contained series, the cover design of which without a title differed only in terms of color. The subsequent Freiland concept series went even more consistently in the direction of minimization in the sense of the “art of omission” proclaimed by Voigt . This visually similar series of minimal techno releases was musically now almost entirely reduced to the level of bass and sub-bass.

1996 was Voigt's pop techno album Life's A Gas , which was released under the project name Love Inc. on the Frankfurt label Force Inc. Music Works , album of the year for the music magazine Spex . In the same year he released the first album of his highly acclaimed audiovisual project Gas on the label Mille Plateaux , an intoxicatingly dark work of art based on heavily condensed classical sound sources, which inspired audiences far beyond the electronics and techno scene. The abstract natural sound cosmos of strings and winds, as well as the cover design based on Voigt's forest photographs, show Voigt's specific artistic networking with the spirit of Romanticism and the German Forest as a place of longing.

From 1998 Voigt built up his own independent music company together with his partners. A label, its own sales department, a publishing house and an artist agency were founded and expanded under the Kompakt brand . The selected musical program and the unmistakable visual design make the label a brand with a high recognition value to this day. In 2003 at the latest, when Kompakt moved into a large residential and commercial building in downtown Cologne, the vision of its own independent “culture factory” was increasingly realized.

Since around 2008 he has been primarily devoting himself to his own artistic work. For the 2010 album Freiland Klaviermusik he reactivated his label Profan , on which he had not released any records for 10 years. For the production of the album, on which he combines pianola sounds and minimal techno rhythms, he was inspired by the Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow .

With new musical projects and sub-labels such protest , Kafkatrax , Polkatrax and gas -Nachfolgerprojekt return Enchantment developed Voigt his artistic cosmos consistently. In terms of his interdisciplinary work at the interface of art and music, he is increasingly bringing his musical and visual work together. In doing so, he essentially pursues two basic artistic approaches, which he repeatedly varies: on the one hand, the loop principle, the static or varied repetition of minimalist repetitive arrangements that allow certain patterns to emerge; on the other hand, the abstract deformation and compression ( deconstruction ) of external sound and image sources ( samples ), which in a (hypothetical) liberation from their original meaning are traced back to their basic structure, their pure aesthetics (de-interpretation).

Wolfgang Voigt has released over 160 albums, EPs and singles as well as countless remixes under more than 30 different pseudonyms since the early 1990s .

Labels and projects

Voigt is known for releasing his music under new names. He uses the various pseudonyms to design and publish different types of electronic music. He works on various occasions with other musicians - mostly from the Cologne area. His most important projects include:

  • All ( ambient project)
  • Buoyancy (profane sub-label for brute "sawtooth techno")
  • Freiland (Profan sub-label, minimalist concept techno made of bass drum and bass sounds)
  • Gas (audiovisual ambient project from highly condensed classical sound sources)
  • Kafkatrax (psychedelic minimal techno from bass drum and Kafka audio book text fragments)
  • Love Inc. (acid / techno with pop music references)
  • M: I: 5 (Abstract Minimal Techno)
  • Mike Ink (hardcore techno, acid and minimal techno)
  • Polkatrax (experimental cross between minimal techno and reduced polka music )
  • Profan (Voigt's main label, free platform for various experimental techno and ambient projects)
  • Protest (profane sub-label, experimental crossover techno)
  • Re-enchantment (abstract ambient without beats)
  • Studio 1 (profane sub-label, strictly minimalist concept techno)
  • Wassermann (Poppig abstract techno with partly German-language text references)

Cooperations

  • Burger / Ink or Burger / Voigt (dark, melancholic ambient guitar techno in collaboration with Jörg Burger )
  • Erdingertrax (techno project in collaboration with his brother Reinhard Voigt )
  • Mohn (slow motion techno with and without bass drum, in collaboration with Jörg Burger)
  • Voigt & Voigt (pop / rock techno in collaboration with his brother Reinhard Voigt)

Awards

  • 2019: Main prize of the Holger Czukay Prize for Pop Music from the City of Cologne

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Voigt: Danceflorensics at mono-kultur.com, accessed on September 21, 2015
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Voigt - Freiland Klaviermusik at discogs.com, accessed on June 30, 2010.
  3. ↑ De: Bug 144, Jul./Aug. 2010, p. 80
  4. ↑ Biography / Philosophy at wolfgang-voigt.com, accessed on September 21, 2015
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Voigt - The Independent Principle at vimeo.com, accessed on September 21, 2015
  6. ↑ Götterdämmerung in the disco? at zeit.de, accessed on September 21, 2015
  7. ↑ City of Cologne press release of September 11, 2019: Holger Czukay Prize for Pop Music of the City of Cologne 2019 , accessed on September 11, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Voigt, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ink, Mike (pseudonym); Gas (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German minimal techno musician and label operator
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne