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: I saw this movie by Canadian director Atom Egoyan once, late at night on TV, and can’t get it out of my head since then. It’s a complex and haunting story about love and communication, about language, translation and home, played by himself and his wife, actress Arsinee Khanjian. As all of Egoyan’s movies, it’s incredibly constructed, and finds pictures and stories for things you can’t express with words.
