Erased Tapes

“All the information, all that noise... As much as it can help give context, it also takes something away. It tends to cloud your senses and take away from the magic of when you first hear something that’s completely unknown to your ears. How wonderful a sensation it is to just listen and let the music speak for itself without prejudice or the need for any references.” — Robert Raths

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The creator of Piano Day has struck again! In mid-March 2020, without any prior notice, Nils Frahm released an album of eight "lullabies" dating from the time of his album Screws, called Empty. For this new edition of Piano Day (launched in 2015), the German pianist went through his archives to unearth an album recorded at MUMUTH, the University of music and performing arts in Graz, in 2009, as part of Conversations for Piano and Room produced by Thomas Geiger, the founder of Kunsthalle3000. Graz offers a window into Nils Frahm's early period. Back then, he had just landed in Berlin and he was still self-producing his albums. The Nils Frahm who reveals himself through these nine tracks is "raw", perhaps, but as stunning as ever (see, for example, the superb Because This Must Be). The famous "Frahm sound" did not then exist. It would be developed a few months later, on Felt (2011). This was made when the artist decided, so as not to disturb his neighbours, to wedge felt between the strings and hammers of his piano and to place microphones nearby in order to be able to listen to himself on headphones. There are also two tracks that wouldn't make the cut for Spaces, his 2013 album based on field recording and electronic improvisations. Hammers, developed here in two short minutes, a "drier" version that laid the foundation for one of the pianist's signature titles – and one of his most hypnotic. And Went Missing, which closes the album, which also sounds a little “harder" than the muted and mezzo piano version of Spaces, but no less majestic. © Smaël Bouaici / Qobuz