{"id":785750,"date":"2026-07-07T09:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785750\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T09:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T09:27:11","slug":"gas-november-89-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785750\/","title":{"rendered":"GAS: November 89 Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like an author of fantasy fiction, Wolfgang Voigt<\/a> is continually rewriting and restructuring the internal logic of his own world, going back to his old work in the hopes of imposing some order upon his sprawling mythopoeia. His self-titled debut<\/a> as GAS<\/a> was one of several<\/a> breakthroughs<\/a> the German producer experienced in 1996, but its vast, emotionally neutral expanses of nothing had little to do with the sampledelia of his later work under the name; when he rereleased it on 2008\u2019s Nah Und Fern<\/a> compilation, he swapped two tracks out entirely for new work that felt more apiece with the approach he perfected on 1997\u2019s Zauberberg. The Box<\/a> set in 2016 further tinkered with the classics; Zauberberg gained 12 minutes, K\u00f6nigsforst got a new track sequence, Oktember had Side A completely swapped out for an older piece called \u201cTal 90.\u201d Of the music he made during his original run of GAS albums between 1996 and 2000, only the flawless Pop<\/a> exists in any definitive version.<\/p>\n

November 89 folds one of the strangest outliers in the Wolfgang Voigt catalog under the GAS name. This is the first vinyl pressing of music that was originally released in 2008 as a CD insert with a book of the psychedelic forest artwork that\u2019s a crucial part of the GAS aesthetic. It still shows up on streaming platforms as Wolfgang Voigt – GAS, confusing if you\u2019re trying to Google it, with red-tinted artwork not far removed from that on Zauberberg. The music resembles that of GAS but is blockier, stranger, more oblong. The reissue indicates that some of this music dates back as far as 1989 and 1990, hence the titles \u201cNovember 89\u201d and \u201cTal 90,\u201d but what of \u201cDer Wald\u201d and \u201cDas Moor,\u201d or the imposing, frightening 11-minute piece called \u201cNah Und Fern\u201d that shares its name with the 2008 compilation? This package raises as many questions as it answers.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis effectively completes the existing GAS vinyl series by adding the \u2018first\u2019 album, which had previously been missing,\u201d reads a statement on the Kompakt Bandcamp. Interesting\u2014are we meant to retroactively take this as the debut instead of GAS? At five tracks in 53 minutes, it\u2019d be the shortest album under the name, and you can hear him fumbling towards the ideas he would fully develop on Zauberberg. The package depicts the usual impenetrable forest of the GAS packaging in stark, thorny monochrome. As a piece of vinyl, it looks damned good next to the other GAS albums. And for a project so deeply linked with Germany itself\u2014to the K\u00f6nigsforst where Voigt experienced his youthful acid trips, to the Gothic-psychedelic sensibility that led to the conception of something like the Cologne Cathedral, to the whole tradition of German techno, even to stuff like glam and schlager and oompah\u2014it\u2019s appropriate its birth would occur in such an auspicious month in German history<\/a>. In other words, it makes sense as GAS\u2019 debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like an author of fantasy fiction, Wolfgang Voigt is continually rewriting and restructuring the internal logic of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-785750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}