German pianist and composer Nils Frahm debuted with Streichelfisch (2005),
an album of digital glitch noise and intricate beats that ranges from
indulgent chaos to new-age meditative tranquillity, with the notable
exceptions of the folkish Lieb Erlassen and the carillon-like No-w Here.
These idyllic vignettes of glitchy ambient music are engaging precisely because they are naive.
He then recorded ten untiled solo piano sonatas on Electric Piano (2008) in a nostalgic, old-fashioned, autumnal, romantic style.
Grand piano solos are also on
Graz, recorded in 2009 but only released in 2021.
The border between new-age music, jazz improvisation and classical music had been explored in the 1980s by the likes of Michael Jones,
and here Frahm sounds like a minor follower of Michael Jones.
The EP
Wintermusik (2009), besides
the temptation to emulate Richard Clayderman's sentimental style in Ambre,
collects two longer melodic fantasias for chamber ensemble
(piano, xylophone, accordion and cello): the
17-minute melancholy melodic Tristana
and the nine-minute jovial Nue.
Frahm was now a diligent pupil of the new-age music of the 1980s.
The Bells (2009), produced by Peter Broderick, veered towards classical music with more austere compositions performed (loudly) on a grand piano.
For the most part, the album sounds pretentious: an amateur pianist performing
original compositions that imitate classical music.
At least Wintermusik was a decent ambient album.
Felt (2011) mostly returned to the new-age music of Wintermusik
(notably in Familiar), sometimes bordering on
lounge muzak (Unter), but
Frahm also discovered Steve Reich's minimalism
and wed it to facile melodies
in Keep and especially in the nine-minute
Mike Oldfield-ian
More.
The best results are maybe the slow and bare melodies of Less and Pause, that sound suspended in time.
The EP Juno (2011) contains two pieces for solo synthesizer.
Juno Reworked (2013) contains remixes.
Screws (2012) contains eight pieces for piano
(played with nine fingers because one was injured),
seven of which are
titled after the seven notes of the Western scale.
Do is the least trivial.
Screws Reworked (2015) contains remixes.
The live album
Spaces (2013) delivers
a nine-minute version of Said and Done (it lasted only three minutes on The Bells), the
eight-minute Says, which is even better in incorporating Reich's repetition technique into a melodic context, although the bombastic crescendo a` la
Vangelis
is typical of what does not work in Frahm's music,
and the dramatic 17-minute electronic fantasia For - Peter - Toilet Brushes - More, virtually a tribute to Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht.
Solo (2015) is another solo piano album which alternates between pretentious, dull and bland.
Frahm also composed the soundtrack for Sebastian Schipper's film Victoria (2015).
Collaborations included:
7fingers (2010) with celloist Anne Mueller;
Music for Lovers Music Versus Time (2010),
Music for Wobbling Music Versus Gravity (2013) and
Tag eins Tag zwei (2016)
with F.S. Blumm (producer Frank Schueltge,
the co-founder of Quasi Dub Development);
and
Collaborative Works (2015) and Trance Frendz (2016) with Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Olafur Arnalds.
Seeljocht (2011) was the debut album of a collective
consisting of Greg Haines (piano), Sytze Pruiksma (percussion), Piiptsjilling (vocals), Romke Kleefstra (guitar), Rutger Zuydervelt (electronics), Peter Broderick (violin), Heather Broderick (harp) and Frahm.
Nonkeen, a trio with Sebastien Singwald and Frederic Gmeiner, is documented on The Gamble (2016), an album of jazzy ambient techno recorded over an eight-year period. Oddments of the Gamble (2016) collects the leftovers.
He collaborated with DJ Shadow on Bergschrund (2016).
The sprawling All Melody (2018) opted instead for lush arrangements
with choir, strings, horns and pipe organ joining the piano.
The result is undewhelming: the nine-minute Sunson mixes a swampy rhythm and an angelic female melody (five minutes too long);
the eight-minute Kaleidoscope instead contrasts the angelic Enya-esque vocals with a hysterical polyrhythm;
the nine-minute
All Melody is simply
old-fashioned electronic new-age music for bubbling sequencers
(four minutes too long);
and the ten-minute #2 (the standout) is atmospheric minimal techno with a looped Terry Riley-ian organ melody rising over the beat (unfortunately turning into a Vangelis-style apotheosis).
The EPs
Encores 1 (2018), notably the eleven-minute Harmonium in the Well for reed organ performed in a stone well,
Encores 2 (2019), notably Spells,
and
Encores 3 (2019), notably the 14-minute ambient piece Amirador,
were collected on All Encores (2019).
The 27-minute mini-album Empty (2020) incorporated field recordings of natural sounds, notably in A Shine.
Tripping with Nils Frahm (2020) collects live recordings.
The double-disc Old Friends New Friends (2021) collects solo piano compositions recorded between 2009 and 2021.
2X1=4 (2021) was another collaboration with Blumm.
Frahm's career basically recycled
classical music, minimalism, new-age music and cosmic music
for young people who never heard them
but too often he offered a low-quality version of each of these genres
and get some credit for the "novelty" (which in fact older than you).
He diplayed more ambition on
the three-hour Music for Animals (2022), that contains
lengthy synth-based instrumentals such as
The Dog With 1000 Faces (26:21),
Sheep In Black And White (24:47),
Stepping Stone (18:15),
Briefly (27:02),
Lemon Day (18:32),
Do Dream (22:36).
They are generally more kinetic than his tradermark piano ambient music;
and they are way longer, which is a mixed blessing.
