Articles
2011 10 Favourite Labels
Spotlight 3

Albums
Félicia Atkinson
Autistici
Bee Mask
Biomass
Gui Boratto
Peter Broderick
Benjamin Broening
bvdub
Chicago Odense Ens.
Dday One
Lawrence English
The Field
Nils Frahm
Douglas Greed
Jim Haynes
Hess + McFall
High aura'd
Hior Chronik
itsnotyouitsme
King Midas Sound
Leyland Kirby
Knox & Oberland
Koss/Henriksson/Mullaert
Tom Lawrence
Mist
Phonte
Planetary Assault Systems
Rustie
Sense
Sepalcure
Slove
Splashgirl
Two People In A Room
Vaetxh
Christina Vantzou
Marius Vareid
Wolfgang Voigt
Water Borders
Wenngren & Bissonnette
Xhin
Eisuke Yanagisawa
yMusic

Compilations / Mixes
Above The City
Air Texture Vol. 1
Burning Palms
Emerging Organisms 4
Live And Remastered

EPs
Antonymes/ S. D. Society
Cardopusher
Cyrus
Gulls
Keepsakes
Late Night Chronicles
Old Apparatus
Option Command
Pillowdiver
Benoît Honoré Pioulard
Kevin Reynolds
Strategy

Nils Frahm: Felt
Erased Tapes

If you've heard or read anything about Felt, the latest album by Berlin-based pianist Nils Frahm, you're by now probably aware that he recorded it late during the quiet of the night in his studio and that, out of consideration for his neighbours, he dampened his piano by layering thick felt in front of its strings and playing with even more gentleness than is his usual custom. You might also know that he positioned the microphones so deeply inside the piano they were almost touching the strings. As a result, certain sounds, such as his own breathing and the ambient scrapes and creaks produced by the instrument and wooden floorboards, are amplified even more than usual and take their place within the recording's fabric. That he's chosen a word connoting intimacy and emotion for the album title seems entirely fitting in light of the aural evidence. In one sense, Frahm's music hasn't changed from the delicate material he gave us on his previously issued solo piano works Wintermusik and The Bells, as Felt's neo-classical settings are as refined, melodic, melancholy, contemplative, and tender as the ones on those superb outings.

Like the rapid pitter-patter of raindrops striking a hard surface, “Keep” unfolds in sparkling waves of animated tinkles and marimba-like prcussive patterns. In the three-minute wonderland, Frahm becomes a one-man band that simulates a Steve Reich ensemble or So Percussion. The tempo dramatically slows in the following piece, “Less,” and in the later “Pause,” where oceanic pauses between the piano chords allow for the myriad ambient noises to loudly declare themselves—but not so much that they displace one's attention from the loveliness of the becalmed mood pieces in question. As always with Frahm's recordings, there are moments of hushed beauty such as “Snippet” that in their own quietly powerful way can take one's breath away. The closing “More” brings the recording full circle by revisiting the motorik pulsations of “Keep” in a track that if anything intensifies the buoyant thrust of the opener—until, that is, the rhythms drop away halfway through and the album eases itself out on a once-again reflective note.

November 2011