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: This book with the great title Art Is Something Different collects photographs of outsider artists, who live for their vision and their art. One of them is Luigi Lineri, who lives near Verona in Italy. He collects stones from a near river and arranges them according to their shape. We had the book in the studio while we recorded our new album, and I couldn’t stop looking at Lineri’s house of stones. In the end we called one of our songs “Lineri,” one that seems to illustrate the rhythms and patterns of his arrangements.
