Wednesday, November 10, 2004

"N" IS FOR NEW SHOES

After 10 years or so of mediocrity, German hard rockers The Notwist reinvented themselves as post-rock sweeties and put out "Neon Golden" a few years back. Lots of polyrythms, unusual instrumentation and obscure lyrics.

Neon Golden is replete with textured sounds, drifting (and occasionally driving) pulsations, and mesmerizing hypno-rhythms. It's been quite a while since the last time I actually felt I've been with a record like this. Sounds odd, but that's exactly the feeling I've received over the last two weeks. And when you've got that much time to spend with a record, it becomes an entity in and of itself. Most times with a record review, you get a few precursory listens and then by number five or six, you're spitting out a review. Not so here. With well over fifty listens to this disc, it's like a relationship has begun to spring forth out of the ether. I guess you could say Neon Golden and me have become well acquainted and it's already akin to hanging with an old friend. Given that amount of time, realizations occur. One of my first was that, in many ways, this record is about textures: electronic bleats, pulsing waves, the mixture of organic instruments with digital blips and loops, and most notably the serenity of Markus Acher's voice.

Quite a change of pace. For the better.

:: Posted by pete @ 21:56