Classical Gas

Two CDs containing talented guitarist, comedian and writer Mason's five albums for Warner Bros Records, dating from 1968 to 1971. Originally featured on 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' US TV show, 'Classical Gas' as performed by Williams became a US No.2 hit and a Top 10 hit in the UK and Canada. Williams has had a varied career, from recording with Mannheim Steamroller to bluegrass with Byron Berline, to writing comedy for 'Saturday Night Live'.

The third album from Soap&Skin, the working moniker for Austrian musician and producer Anja Plaschg, From Gas to Solid… marks her return with her first album in six years. From Gas to Solid… belatedly follows the release of the Top Ten albums Lovetune For Vacuum in 2009 and 2012's Narrow (an Austrian No 1) but in that time in between the artist has been busy, not least with the birth of her daughter and subsequent motherhood but as well with many other creative works such as composing for theatre and film productions, as well as film acting. From Gas to Solid…inhabits a similar world as previous works albeit perhaps partnered with a more balanced adult view than the raw, angrier aspects of those outings but still reflects the struggles to find meaning, answers, and a place to survive. Encompassing a range of musical allegiances - infused with tranquil electronica, militaristic percussion, whilst coupled with choral ambience and earthy ethereal grandeur, an expansive, stunning, wide-reaching album of dynamic beauty - the finale arrives in a serene interpretation of Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World.

At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.