A sea of strings swims into view, and the crackle of vinyl reaches out of the mix like tendrils. The tone is tense, urgent, paranoid, and minor-key, interrupted by long exhalations on a major-key chord. There’s no beat, but anyone familiar with GAS might find themselves already smiling with anticipation: It’s coming. Sure enough, the kick drum that undergirds most of Wolfgang Voigt’s revered ambient techno project slowly fades in, accompanied by a martial snare that first showed up on his last album Rausch.
It’s not the only familiar scene on Der Lange Marsch, the project’s seventh album. Voigt’s label Kompakt has hinted this might be the last GAS album, and Voigt treats Der Lange Marsch like a career retrospective, threading bits and pieces of his previous works into a constant four-on-the-floor pattern. Fans will recognize the pneumatic burbling from “Pop 1” on “Der Lange Marsch 8,” the urgent fox-hunt horn from “Konigsförst 5” on “Der Lange Marsch 9,” the glistening drone from “Zauberberg 1” on “Der Lange Marsch 11.”
The GAS project has developed so incrementally that Voigt plundering his past isn’t unwelcome or unexpected, and there are enough subtle developments for Der Lange Marsch to strike a distinct tone. The string samples are less dense than usual, clustering close to the beat rather than blossoming through the stereo field. And while it’s structured as a single piece, like Rausch, it moves more quickly, never staying on one idea too long; the rhythm runs completely uninterrupted for the central hour of the 67-minute album.
The most shocking rupture in the project’s harmonic framework is the creepy choir that drifts like a ghost through “Der Lange Marsch 10.” It’s the first time recognizable vocals of any kind have ever showed up on a GAS album, and it’s easy to wonder what an album that incorporated more voices into the usual sampled stew might sound like. I think GAS still has places to go: I can picture a GAS album with 20- or 25-minute tracks, one that switches up the drums a bit, one that leans even further into Der Lange Marsch’s more inward approach and embraces the low-end murk of William Basinski or Akira Rabelais.
There’s one development, though, that has already made Der Lange Marsch the most divisive GAS album: the high-pitched beep on every other beat. Some listeners don’t notice it, others seem able to tune it out, and for many, it’s an impassable barrier to entry. Voigt used a similar frequency on Rausch, but only in short intervals. Here, it literally never lets up except during the brief bits at the beginning and end with no drums. Once you realize you’re going to have to learn to live with that beat, the album starts to earn its title: The Long March.
It seems like an odd artistic choice to throw such a jarring and potentially alienating sound over your career-spanning retrospective, especially considering that this is otherwise the sunniest and most euphonious of the three GAS albums Voigt has released since bringing the project back from hiatus in 2017. Voigt suffers from tinnitus, and it’s possible that he’s asking the listener to empathize with his condition. But is putting a beep over an otherwise perfectly enjoyable album the right way to go about it? If there’s a new GAS album to look forward to, it’s a fan edit that cuts that frequency right out.
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