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The Notwist

The Notwist, hailing from Weilheim (Germany), have come a long way since their post-punk roots. Their latest album, 'Neon Golden', is a pure pop masterpiece with rough, experimental edges. Time to sit down with Micha Acher to find out just what 15 months in a studio does to a man.

Tekst: Alex Tobin

Publicatiedatum: 15 januari 2002

You worked on your new album 'Neon Golden' for 15 months. What was it like to work on a record for such a long time? Are you perfectionists, and was there a certain point when you said, "OK, this will do?"
"With 'Shrink', we developed a personal way of working. You have an idea, the idea gets recorded, and then we collect and collect and collect and collect... tracks and more tracks. Then we take a look at things and select things, make small edits, use small things, finally putting it all back together into one piece. We started doing this with 'Shrink', and we decided to do the same thing with this record and to do it more extremely still. We told ourselves that we'd work as long on this record until it pleased us. We never planned a certain ending to the recording process. That can be good or bad. You can work very detailed and very minutely, but on the other hand it's the case that some songs completely changed after ten or twelve months, changed in a positive manner... We recorded the title song, 'Neon Golden', just before mixing the album. It got added very late in the game, and so it's pretty good that you are occupied so long with the recording process."

Did you have the luxury of having your own studio to be able to do this?
"No, in Weilheim there's a guy called Mario Thaler, who makes about all of the records, also for example the Lali Puna album. He's a friend of ours. It's not our studio, and we have to pay for it of course, since he's got a lot of high costs, and it's a very big, super studio. But we did have better conditions. You have to have these; otherwise something like this isn't possible. It was extremely expensive, but we sort of didn't care about that. We said that we'd make an extremely good album. We've always operated in this way. Either things go completely wrong or it works or it turns out well. It doesn't matter. We have to make sure that we make some good music. It was difficult for all of us to work on something for two years. It means you don't play any concerts, you don't earn any money. That's also something you need to prepare yourself for, and it's completely normal for us. It's just what we do."

So none of this striving for perfection had anything to do with a change of record label to City Slang?
"No, the decision to go to another label basically was reached after the record was more or less completed. When we were busy in the studio, we were always looking for a label to go to, but it wasn't the case that we said, 'Now! Now we've got to do it!' It wasn't that way. If it had been that way, we probably would have decided for another label. If we had said, 'We really want to taste fame...'"

How do you work on the sound of the music? Is it a collaborative effort, with all four members working together on songs, or does one of you come with an idea?
"There are three writers in the band: Martin [Gretschmann aka Console], Markus [Acher, Micha's brother], and me. Every one of us has a different way of working. Markus works with the guitar, which he's been using to write Notwist songs for 15 years now. I write at the piano and at the computer, and Martin works at the computer. Markus comes to me and records his ideas. My input is usually to add some electronic elements or to write arrangements. Then I pass it on to Martin, who does his thing with it. He then once again passes it on to Markus, complete with the rhythm he's added to it. Markus then adds some harmonies - vocal harmonies - to it, and then he passes it on to me, and I add some horns or something like that. That's the way we operate - sort of ping pong-like. This way, when you've been working on a song so long, you can't even really pinpoint who wrote which track, because the influences of each individual have become so important. For example, 'Pick Up The Phone' was a song that Martin did on the computer, and it now sounds like one of Markus' songs written on the guitar. It's completely grown together, due to this long back-and-forth process."

Do you enjoy working in the studio, or is it more a necessity for you, in order to get that sound you're looking for?
"When we go into the studio, we don't have a concrete idea of what we want to do. It's always open, and it changes quite extremely with the course of time. We went into the studio with completely different ideas, as opposed to what came out of it with this album. It's completely different."

How different is it for you to play to a live audience?
"Playing live is the most important thing to us, and working in the studio is also the most important thing to us. Whatever we're doing at a certain time, that's what's fun for us. We like to work that way. I do have to say, though, that playing live is more fun for me, because you're making music instantly. Making music is much more enjoyable for me than talking about it or discussing it. Working with people in the studio is crazy too, though. It's such an intensive time, working on something for so long. It was partly very stressful, but when we left the studio - after completing something that we'd been working on for almost two years - we had a feeling like, 'Hey! Hmm... What are we going to do now?' I had no direct plan, and Markus had the Lali Puna album to work on a week after that, and Martin also began work on his record. He was in Spain and had started work on that. I resolved to start composing for Tied & Tickled Trio [one of Micha's other musical projects], since we're going into the studio again in June, and I have an idea for that record. But it was like, 'Hey, shit!' It was a bit like after school: 'I need my fix to exist! What are we going to do now? The studio time is over...'"

What music have you been listening to recently?
"In the final phase of recording this last Notwist album, I'd only been listening to ancient blues records, which mutated into Dixieland music and Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, stuff like that. As far as blues music is concerned, old stuff like Charley Patton, but also later stuff like Hound Dog Taylor."

These sounds didn't make too big of a mark on the new album though.
"Well, on one song, 'Neon Golden', the blues was very important. You can often only convey a feeling in a song. It would be horrible if we would begin [sings blues scales], 'Doo be dee be doo.' We don't play stuff like that. It wouldn't be good. You have to approach styles like that step by step. I think we tried, on the track 'Neon Golden', to reflect a certain mood, just like we tried to put a dub feeling into 'Pilot', even though it's not an authentic dub part, but just a mood. It's always the case that we try to create certain moods that evolve out of certain musical styles. We don't try to imitate those styles. We're not going to play reggae-rock."

Notwist songs have a high level of experimentation. How difficult is it for you to achieve a good balance between these experiments and strong, clear melodies?
"For us, it's extremely important that there are always funny little things happening in our music, so, when we listen to the songs a year from now, we're happy with these little quirks. As far as melody is concerned, we wanted a more monotonous, noisy, challenging record. The first few times Markus and I spoke about what we wanted to do, it was, 'Hey - monotonous, noisy, and challenging to listen to.' We didn't succeed, because we weren't able to write songs in that vein at that time. Everything that came to us - by coincidence to each of us - was defined by a format and a melody. That often happens when we go into the studio as Notwist, although our other bands experience the opposite. We recorded the Tied & Tickled Trio live album in that timeframe, and that record is completely without format or structure. It's free, and we just play. Probably due to the fact that we do that sort of stuff with other bands so excessively, it doesn't work with Notwist. It always ends up so structured, and the melodies are a certain... style. It always returns, subconsciously."

Notwist melodies are often very upbeat and cheerful, whereas the lyrics often act as a more sober, disillusioned opposite to that. Is this contrast important to you?
"It's really hard for me to talk about the lyrics, since Markus writes a good deal of those. He can really describe the most detailed and small things. Markus always tries to do exactly what you just said. Roughly speaking, you could say it's pop music with pop structures, and Markus always tries to work against that structure. For example, on 'Trashing Days': a pretty piece, a super chorus, and Markus is talking about how he always gets punched or knocked out. He always wants to try to explain that not everything is great all of the time. It's not all pop and glamour. He's a guy who makes mistakes; it's not all great. Many things are just shitty and end up badly. A lot of weird stuff happens to him, and he's not a Superman. Certain things, he doesn't admire at all. I think this is the sort of stuff he's trying to get across, also with his choice of words. The song 'Neon Golden' is very bluesy, and Markus tries to use words in the song that are completely at odds with the blues genre. The word 'neon' is at complete odds with 1920s-style blues music. It's a dividing line he always tries to use in his lyrics. The title 'Neon Golden' is a contrast in itself. 'Golden' is warm, acoustic, and 'neon' is hard, cold, computer-based. It wasn't a concept that we wanted 'Neon Golden' as the title of the record. When we started doing the press and interview tours, we noticed that it was exactly the theme of the record for us, extreme acoustics meet extreme electronics, trying to connect those two elements into a homogenous one. 'Neon' and 'golden' - that is the contrast, cold and warm. "

http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/the-notwist/the-notwist-873/873/
Meer The Notwist op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/the-notwist