Close to the glass
| Close to the glass | ||||
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| Studio album by The Notwist | ||||
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Publication |
2014 |
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| Label (s) | City slang , sub pop | |||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP, MP3 |
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Electronica, post-rock , indie pop |
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Title (number) |
12 |
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running time |
47:26 |
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Studio (s) |
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Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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Close to the Glass is the eighth studio album of the band The Notwist . It was released on February 21, 2014 on the City Slang label .
Origin and style
As with the previous albums, the band took their time before they went back to work on a new long player. Between the comparatively sparse and withdrawn instrumentation of the predecessor The Devil, You + Me (2008) and the appearance of Close to the Glass, there are six years and a lot of solo and side projects by the three band members. The Notwist spent around 100 days in their studio in Weilheim for the recordings - which is extraordinarily long for 12 tracks.
The album combines a variety of styles and genres and can be assigned to a single musical style less than previous albums. Pieces like the eponymous Close to the Glass are heavily electronically instrumented and sound mechanical and cold, while Kong seems to get by with traditional indie instrumentation and the guitar comes to the fore. The band itself said that during the production of the album they “didn't even try” to “find a uniform style”, but rather assessed each piece for itself. In reviews, the comparison to a mixtape was drawn several times. Band member Martin Gretschmann described the album as "a hodgepodge of everything The Notwist have done over the years".
As the first piece, Close to the Glass was published several months before the regular release date on the Soundcloud platform. Shortly before the release date, they released a second track on Soundcloud with the cheerful-sounding up-tempo piece Kong .
An animated music video by Japanese director Yu Sato was also released in advance for the title Kong .
reception
The album received mostly positive reviews. Almost all of the reviews agreed that it was the band's most versatile album and that it was experimenting with different styles of music. Stylistic comparisons ranged from The Cure in vocals to Radiohead, Minimal Music by Philip Glass and the Beach Boys (“only with a computer”). Some reviewers saw the band's history masterfully retold in the album and reinterpreted as a whole in a single album. Critical reviewers rated Close to the Glass as a "transitional album: with interesting impulses, but also a certain fleetingness."
Readers of Spex magazine voted Close to the Glass number 4 on the 2014 annual charts.
Close to the Glass was nominated for the Independent Music Companies Association's European Independent Album of the Year Award .
Reviews
“Notwist travel the world like Michael Ende's pseudo giant. The closer you let the cautious songs get closer to you, the smaller they get and the nicer. You've heard every note before, but never like this. If you listen to this great German winter album on your computer, you will experience how the sounds of incoming messages and emails mix with the music, as if they had been composed for it. If that doesn't captivate you, you are wrong in your life. "
“And when Notwist now present their current work on Close To The Glass , in which there is no crackling in the wrong place and none of the many tracks is a crooked path, you finally get a sense of how indifferent the band has always been like them is seen. The record pulsates undeterred by all the fashions, so serenely it tells of nothing but itself. The impressive consistency of their work in the past 25 years makes it clear: This band doesn't need a network, a huge wave, they don't even need the excitement anymore which still triggers the announcement of a new Notwist song online. "
" Close to the Glass sounds like a mixtape of very different pieces that the band gives their listeners as a present and recorded themselves out of passion."
Track list
- Signals 3:41
- Close to the Glass 2:57
- Kong 4:31
- Into Another Tun e 3:57
- Casino 3:14
- From One Wrong Place to the Next 2:44
- 7 Hour-Drive 3:57
- The Fifth Quarter of the Globe 0:49
- Run Run Run 5:04
- Steppin 'in 2:00
- Lineri 8:52
- They Follow Me 5:41
Individual evidence
- ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts CH
- ↑ a b c Die Zeit, Nº 08/2014, February 20, 2014
- ↑ a b Discussion and detailed statement of the band at detektor.fm
- ↑ taz, February 16, 2014
- ↑ Close to the Glass at Soundcloud - uploaded on November 23, 2013.
- ↑ "The band as a buzz of its parts" in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, February 16, 2014, page 44
- ^ "Distant Planets", in: Abendzeitung, February 21, 2014, page 20
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung, February 21, 2014, page 25
- ^ "Weilheim Calling", in: Welt am Sonntag, February 16, 2014, page Bayern-4
- ↑ As an example at Spiegel Online
- ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau of February 20, 2014, page B2
- ↑ Spex Annual Charts 2014 ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Wesbiste from IMPALA - accessed on March 10, 2015
- ↑ "This is exactly how our life sounds" - Die Welt, February 20, 2014, page 21
- ^ SZ of February 16, 2014
