Zauberberg (1998)

Wolfgang Voigt's Gas records turn techno into forest weather, and this one, named after Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, is generally considered the darkest and most dissonant of them. A distant kick drum thuds under smeared loops that sound like an orchestra heard through fog and pine trees, never quite resolving. Played quietly it is hypnotic; played loud it becomes oppressive, like woods that will not end. Intensity: low-level menace, steady rather than sudden.