Voi ci credete? Io ancora no: abbiamo chiesto ai Notwist di raccontarci la loro Collezione di Dischi.
La band tedesca ha da poco pubblicato per Alien Transistor il primo disco live Superheroes, Ghostvillains + Stuff registrato durante un concerto alla UT Connewitz di Lipsia nel dicembre 2015.
E nulla, qui sotto un po’ di curiosità vvviniliche.
Datemi i pizzicotti.
The first record you bought
Mike Oldfield “Episodes”
In our hometown Weilheim, there was a supermarket, which also had a few records. I already recorded tape-mixes from the radio, and when I got my first record-player from my grandfather, I was thinking hard for two weeks or so, which record I would buy.
I bought one together with my brother ( Smokie – “On the other side of the road”, becuase it was in the charts…), and one only for me, and ended up with this Mike Oldfield-compilation. I have no idea, why… maybe, I read somewhere, that it’s good… however, I was really confused and shocked, and dissapointed, that this will forever be the first music, I ever heard on my new turntables. But as it was the only record, I owned, I listened to it all the time and loved it soon after. It somehow gave me a glue of what music can be apart from the charts and mainstream-radio.
The record you own you are most proud of
I like handmade records… screen-printed, hand-painted, glued together… whatever. Something that I’m always drawn to. But I wouldn’t say, I’ m proud of a record, I own. That sounds a bit wrong to me… There are just some, that are very individual… maybe that makes them special.
Like this Mount Eerie-LP, that has a handpainted cover, with a dolphin or sea-snake on it. Very beautiful. I love Phil Elvrum’s music and art, and every single-one of his records is very precious to me.
A record that made you want to start making records
“Harvest” by Neil Young was a big record for me… one hit after the other, and a wonderful compilation of styles and moods. But “Zuma” in it’s very minimal guitar-bass-drums-arrangements sounded like something, that everybody could try in his rehearsal-space, too. At least until you discover, that your compositions are not half as good as his songs…. and start to try something else – we tried Punk-rock, then :)…
A record that inspires you productionwise
This record still is a big inspiration to everything we do with the Notwist. There are so many layers, so many details, it’s rich with sounds and is very unpredictable. It works a lot with different rooms… some instruments are recorded very close, others sound like they are standing in a far away corner.
But still in the end, it’s all about the songs, and you can forget all this and get just lost in the words and compositions. Despite there is lots of information and instruments, it’s a very calm record.
And it also showed us how you can use improvisations to arrange songs.
A record that always makes you want to dance
The song “Deceptacon” unites it all. It’s cheerful, it’s angry, it has a great melody and a wonderful 60s-rhythm, the most exciting troublemaker for the dancefloor and great words, that fight stupid and sexist lyrics in pop-music. Kathleen Hanna forever.
A record that makes you go all emotional
There are many great versions of this beautiful song, Nina Simone made a very haunting recording of it, too. But this version by Roberta Flack is incredibly moving… beautifully sung, a wonderful bass-and-drum-groove, and strings.
The record that you use to calm down and relax
When we are in the tour-bus, I always have a CD with Gillian-Welch-songs with me. I love her songs and her voice, especially the song “Orphan Girl”, which I listened to a million times, I think.
It’s sad, but also somehow encouraging (although I’m not religious at all). I also played this song to my kids and sang along with it, and they peacefully fell asleep.
Your favourite record of the year 2016 so far
Tenniscoats “music exists ” disk 1: I’m totally honest… It’s the same record as last year. There were many other great great records… the “deux filles”-re-issues, the Vanishing-Twin-LP, Cate le Bon, Deerhoof, the Goon Sax… but I ended up so many times just wanting to hear this record again. And especially “Korin”… What a wonderful song! Someone translated me the lyrics, and one line says something like “the dirty river is glistening”.
Couldn’t think of a better line to describe life.
The last record you bought
