Microscopics

Here is another 5 star Gas 0095 (abridged) review from dance web-mag In The Mix…

Sometimes an album cover says all you need to know about what’s contained inside in one glance. Gas 0095, the 1995 debut LP of England’s Mat Jarvis (not to be confused with Germany’s Wolfgang Voigt who also trades under the name), features a rare, colourful jellyfish shooting into the unknown dark depths of the sea on its cover. It’s a striking image of beauty, if only because of the pure obscurity of the creature.

Gas 0095, re-mastered and re-released this year on Microscopics, is an album that sounds fit to chronicle a documentary of such a peculiar organism. Like the jellyfish in the depths, Jarvis’ music pits high-pitch washes against deep, dark bass to create an aura of complete mystery. After ambient opener Generator, Jarvis bursts out of the blocks with Experiments on Live Electricity, which is a kaleidoscopic 16-minute train ride into the forthcoming post-apocalyptic mayhem where Jarvis fiddles with styles and never truly settles on one in particular.

Microscopic is similarly epic in length, circular key melody floating above sirens, liftoff sequences and tubular bells. Jarvis follows up these two studies with a series of interludes, the briefest of which, Miniscule, carries the unofficial title of ‘shortest track ever’, at under one second long. Timestretch is another cute experiment, a four-minute track shrunk down to the size of a one second blip which can apparently be resized into its glorious original state (which this reviewer attempted and failed).

The other interludes provide a conceptual break from the slow-burn space-house of the longer tracks. But it’s on these long tracks where the album shines. Jarvis is a master at turning electronic chaos into sustained ambience. Disparate textures are layered atop each other in a way that neither clashes nor clutters, each contributing to the underwater, aquatic sound palette. Discovery is a shining example of this, AM radio keys resting on cool oscillations resting on whiny synths rounded off by stuttering kick drum. On paper it doesn’t work, but in practice, Jarvis has the technical flair to coalesce these different elements into a neat package.

Original pressings of the album now fetch three figures on eBay. It’s an amusing point that someone would be willing to pay USD $460 for such an unassuming flash on the electronic music timeline, but the fact is ultimately irrelevant. What’s more important is that this underappreciated gem can now get the attention that it has deserved after more than a decade of obscurity.

5/5

And another from Chris at Rate Your Music

GAS - GAS 0095
Absolutely seminal melodic ambient techno, with touches of house occasionally.  Space music.  Music for exploring the stars.  Music To Play Elite To.  Just generally amazing, emotionally charged, deeply creative music. Finally available again, to purchase and download at Microscopics

Related posts:

• Record Collector Review There’s a Gas 0095 review from Kris Needs in this...
• Gas 0095: Earlabs Review Here is an excerpt from the Earlabs review of Gas...
• Gas 0095: Amazon Review As an update to our last post about Amazon MP3...
• Gas 0095: Down Tempo Review Here is a copy of Down-tempo.net’s review of Gas 0095....
• Gas 0095 CD with Reversible Cover The new Gas 0095 CD comes with reversible cover artwork....