As the Notwist worked together on its new album, Close To The Glass (Sub Pop), the trio felt the songs were going in too many directions. Ultimately, the band gave up on finding a center and embraced the diversity. “With this record, there were no rules anymore,” says frontman Markus Acher. This outcome makes perfect sense when considering the band’s history. The Notwist is all about exploring possibilities: of the interface of acoustic and electronic, the planned and the unplanned, collaboration and revision, evolution and experimentation. The group has released only seven albums over the course of a 25-year career, and Close To The Glass is only the second since 2002’s landmark Neon Golden. Acher will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on the band.
Markus Acher: These days I am waiting for a package to arrive, containing the book Elise Cowen: Poems And Fragments. I know little about her, and read just a few of her poems, which impressed me deeply. I imagine the book somewhere in the air between the home of publisher Asahta press and Munich, where I live, and somehow this picture seems to fit: a life inbetween, falling upwards and torn apart. “Thank god for beatniks,” how Bob Kaufman wrote.
