“It’s like the trend in America for food supplements, you know, where food can’t just be food – it needs to also, like, make you more smart or whatever you need to succeed.” He shifts to sit up on his haunches again. How does Frahm feel about this? “It’s just a bullshit pop phenomenon,” he says. Other streaming services are littered with similarly curated collections, and there’s a whole subgenre of YouTube channels out there that play endless streams of music designed to melt into the background and/or boost listeners’ productivity. Spotify listeners have discovered his output in functional playlists with names like “Music for Concentration”, “Songs for Sleeping”, and “Classical Sleep”. This pursuit of emotional connection, however, is perhaps at odds with some of the most prominent places you’ll find Frahm’s music.
#Sad ambient music from erased tapes records trial
In December last year, he said: “When you read my eventual biography, it will start at 26.”Įnjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up Many are now beginning to peek out at the possibility of a return to something like the way things once were. It’s a strangely fitting time for the album’s emergence: almost a year to the day since many countries around the world began to lock down, and isolation (and living via computer screens) became a daily norm.
Frahm, isolated with just a grand piano and space to breathe, says that he was determined to make something of the opportunity to be alone with his instrument and a raft of quality microphones. Fans will recognise “Hammers”, which has taken on a life of its own as a live track, but otherwise these plaintive, delicate solo pieces will mostly be new to the listener – even if the stir of melancholy in Frahm’s sparing strokes of the keys on tracks like “Crossings” and “Lighter” might sound familiar. Most of the record has remained unheard since it was first laid down over three intense days of solo sessions. It’s named for the city in Austria where all nine tracks were recorded more than a decade ago, in 2009, when Frahm was 26. Today he’s releasing a surprise new album, called Graz. As we talk, he gradually lowers the brightness on his screen and tilts a warm yellow lamp-bulb towards it instead, so as not to succumb any further to its glare. It’s a position that’s at once deeply familiar and singularly uncomfortable for Frahm: he’s spent most of the past 12 months holed up in this studio but does almost anything he can to avoid being in front of a computer.
He sits shrouded in the studio’s muddy brown light, his sharp blue eyes dulled to grey by the computer screen beaming back at him. He describes bitcoin mines in Iceland with contempt, and despairs that “even some of my heroes like Aphex Twin are selling, sorry, crap for 130,000 bucks. It’s unforgivable to participate in something which is so bleak and wrong,” he says.įrahm is in Berlin, at his Funkhaus studio, peering into a webcam. NFTs – the latest phenomenon gripping the industry, in which tokens proving the authenticity of digital artefacts are being auctioned off for millions in cryptocurrency – are, he says, “the most disgusting thing on the planet right now”. He shifts onto his haunches, the peak of his flat cap lengthening into the screen as he leans forward. The globally renowned musician and composer finds it difficult to explain exactly how he feels about making money from art, but occasionally his thoughts sharpen to a diamond point. When something sparks Nils Frahm’s ire, he responds with incandescence.
0 kommentar(er)
