Having spent recent years pursuing a form of musical experimentation, notably in the form of 2021’s improvisational, jazz-influenced album Vertigo Days, German outfit The Notwist are back with a renewed focus on creating pop songs.
With a new album, News From Planet Zombie, forthcoming next year, new single X-Ray is a preview of what to expect. Whilst not perhaps pop in the sense that is going to bother the top of the streaming charts, there is a psychedelic sense of wonder in the song’s cacophonous melodies and the innocent sound of Markus Acher’s vocals.
Shifting back and forth between playful nostalgia, and dark waves of layered distortion, X-Ray audibly sits somewhere between hope and terror. Guitars screech, a metallophone builds a sense of child-like curiosity, and loose drums patter. X-Ray is a wonderfully sloppy collage of sound, like heading to space in the rocket from a child’s drawing, wet pitch-black synths eventually swallowing you up like a black hole.
Check out X-Ray below, and look out for the album News From Planet Zombie, due via Morr Music on 13 March 2026.