Unpacking Narkopop, GAS and Wolfgang Voigt’s arboreal trip through the undergrowth

See the wood for the trees.

After seventeen years, Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt returned to Cologne’s Königsforst woods as GAS to release Narkopop. A project with its roots in Voigt’s youthful lysergic foraging, GAS has grown in stature and scope, without falling too far from the tree.

From the album’s dense, brooding sound – like listening to a Wagnerian opera performed next to Panorama Bar – to its striking visual language, Voigt seems to delve straight back into the depths of the forest to re-create the hyper-real worlds of the original recordings.

And with the original albums recently reissued as a 10xLP box set, Narkopop appears to take on the status of a companion piece of sorts, filled with Voigt’s own photography.

An unsettling (or perhaps unheimlich is the word?) reflection with the original, Kompakt have however suggested that “a closer look at the cover of Narkopop reveals signs of architectural fragments which hint at another, maybe parallel world behind Voigt’s forest.”

Given the album’s immersive nature, with artwork and packaging to match, the further you explore the more obfuscated reality becomes. Nothing about GAS is quite as it seems.

Out now on Kompakt, you can order your copy here and see the artwork in more detail below: