Nils Frahm - All Melody
Nils Frahm- in my opinion definitely a musical genius. Highly regarded by feuilleton critics and the electronic scene alike. I never stop to be blown away by what he is able to create with his numerous keyboard instruments. Contrary to how his fans and critics describe him, Nils Frahm himself doesn’t see of himself of a ‘super musician’. In an Interview with the German newspaper SZ he said:
“I have never understood how one can reconcile humility towards the sound with the self-dramatization of an artist.”
This point of view renders Nils Frahm the sympathetic and accessible guy I perceive him as. This is reinforced I witnessed him in all his restraint and modesty at one of his superb concerts held at the Gasteig concert hall in Munich 2019 - he does not self-promote but leaves all the focus on his beautiful music. His music in short – a merger of elements from experimental Electronic and Acoustic Music, E-Music, Postrock and free improvisation. Moreover, his music is also characterised though the use of analog synthesizers.
His 9th album All Melody, published in 2018, starts off with The Whole Universe Wants to Be Touched. One With the choir London’s Shards humming wordlessly, an uprising melody is formed along with Nils playing on the harmonium. The track smoothly flows into the next track Sounson with more and more instruments floating together. Its graceful and illusory melody leads into a distinctive beat formed by subtle synths and a bass marimba underlying the initial melody. Frahm creates some kind of hecticness through the fast marimba beat, its full sound creating an enormous vivid attraction to the whole track.
There are also has two incredibly soothing and quiet piano tracks My Friend the Forest and Forever Changeless, that Nils Frahm is also very famous for. While listening one can hear some subtle sounds of the inside noises of a piano: Frahm places a microphone deep inside the instrument, thus he is able to integrate the mechanical sound of hammers into his tracks, which is a peculiar feature of Frahms sound aesthetic. Secondly and even more importantly, the tracks also come along with an incredible nostalgic and melancholic touch, hearing how Nils Frahm brings out his full contribution to the piano sounding more like he is improvising and letting out physical tension and emotions through his play.
There is also plenty of groove on the record: particularly with the pieces All Melody and #2. They are characterised by highly rhythmical and more electronic, industrial sounding synths, but still ever so flowy.
A technical highlight of the record is Kaleidoscope, definitely lives up to its name: Nils Frahm uses a pipe organ and its fast polyrhythm causing an energizing oscillation with the support of light and high vocals.
Nils Frahm works in Funkhaus, Berlin in hall 3 which was originally made for classical chamber music built in 1956. According to Frahms one couldn’t find a better acoustic environment to compose. Most of his record All Melody was also recorded at Funkhaus as well as in a little studio on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, where he had access to an old well. Recording in this well the reverb is, according to him, “even more crazy sounding than for example our phone calls reverb. It doesn’t sound anything like a normal reverb. In this well it sounds much more artificial and has a sense of physicality to it.”
Physicality and consequently arriving at such pure sound, are his main inspiration. As an artist he is interested in how sound can produce physical feelings which can be carried through acoustic instruments. Playing on the piano he can physically feel its vibration through his fingers and feel that ‘physical tension’ deriving from the strings. This is key for him to being able to be creative as all this in conjunction generates this “beautiful, inspiring sound”. And this is definitely what you get when listening to his record: Pure sound- All Melody.
If you pay close attention you are really able to hear all this pure sound: a little danish piano which he only bought for 50€ a couple of years ago. He then only had to connect it to a microphone and modify its sound to resonate dampened. Moreover, a piano mellotron, a pipe organ, controlled by MIDI keyboard, analog. For this record he even expanded his equipment with strings, trumpet, tympani, gongs, bass marimba and in particular an abandoned harmonium, which he found at the Funkhaus premises.
As several tracks last eight minutes or even longer, you really get the chance to get involved with the music, considering that it is almost impossible to identify at glance all the elements he put in.
This is exactly why it was so a crucial for me seeing him perform live, which added something really unique to my experience of his music. Particularly, I witnessed how the records I was familiar with got transformed, I was able to understand where they come from, how they are created. I found it fascinating to watch him swapping between his instruments within tracks, making a very vivid performance out of music. Thus, I really recommend watching a live performance, i.e. this one from the Melt! Festival in 2019.
Listen to All Melody on Spotify:
