Back at the start of all this blogging nonsense one of the first things that took me and I had to write about was The Bells by Nils Frahm , a wonderful album full of free floating emotion. With The Bells on heavy rotation as well as a ton of Ólafur Arnalds albums and the amazing Forlandia by Jóhann Jóhannsson, I became a little saturated in the ‘New Classical’ style, so departed for a while. Not for any ill reason, just because I was getting pretty lost in it all, staring into space when I should have been concentrating on what I was doing.
The Bells was so good that I thought Wintermusik, a 3 track release that came out just prior, couldn’t get anywhere near it. Have I ever been wrong? Too many times to count!
Wintermusik opens with Ambre, which if any of you took the good advice and got your hands on the free Erased Tapes sampler II, you would know all about. It is a perfectopening track and a great, accessible showpiece of what Nils is capable of. From the outset it is bittersweetly beautiful, uplifting bass notes fluttering through your mind complimented by a thought provoking, regret filled right hand. It gets so deep and involved that you can hear the strings coming in, lifting the song further when indeed there are no strings at all, you are just so deep in the song that your mind drifts away into the weft of the composition.
Then comes Nue. From the opening notes you already feel that you have arrived in the middle of something important. Such a deep, complex song I have to admit to it becoming one of my favourite pieces of music of all time. There is the space, as there is with all of Nils work, to let your mind work, guided by something created by pure love and an overpowering wealth of talent. With a central pillar to its construction, Nue gently twists and turns allowing different emotions to put in an appearance and creating such a strong web of mental illusion that after listening to it you feel like you have spent 2 hours in a dark cinema laughing and crying along to a piece of cinematic history. I have already driven to completely the wrong place while listening to it, testament to its ability to involve your brain completely.
Tristana finishes off the trio of songs. Opening evocatively, very much with the sound of winter it soon weaves a path through a darker place, gathering richness as it goes. The hook comes back when you are settled on listening to something so wildly different and it is this ability to form a pattern more akin to modern music that makes all of his work so special. It is far more accessible for our generation than the old masters and even though the classical bent is solid, that there is the sensibility of modern dance and indie music lurking in the structure. In Nue you hear certain phrases that remind you of the amazing Essbjorn Svensson and to an extend Nils Frahm is doing to classical music what Svensson did to jazz, not conforming to what it ‘should’ be, just taking the immense talent and making music that comes from within.
With all the heart and space in this record, it feels like it was made just for me and I am sure if you click on the picture above and make the purchase you will feel exactly the same. It unlocks the cinema of the world around you and allows you to watch with a soundtrack that compliments each motion to perfection.
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