Wolfgang Voigt

While he's not a household name, Cologne's Wolfgang Voigt is one of German electronic dance music's undisputed behind-the-scenes kings. This wizard's curtains are woven of aliases: he has used dozens since he began recording in the early '90s, among them Gas, Auftrieb, M:I:5, Mike Ink, Studio 1, Popacid and Wasserman. But Voigt is best known as the figurehead behind Cologne's long-running Kompakt organization, a vertically integrated techno institution comprised of a retail shop, distributor, booking agency and a family of labels including Kompakt, Profan and several other offshoots. Voigt's sound varies by project: Studio 1 redefined minimalist dub techno, while Love Inc. imported acid house to German soil. Voigt's most celebrated project, Gas, updates the German classical canon for the ambient era. Inspired by youthful woodland walks, his Gas material smears orchestral strings into dense thickets of buzzing, beatless sound, mottled with details as ephemeral as the sunlight on a turning leaf.