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I need to be honest right up front—I listen to Nils Frahm nearly every week when I edit the paper. I’m inclined to listen to the German composer/solo artist when I hit turbulence on a plane, or when I want to sink into the clouds’ sweet somberness (as opposed to a “why are you stealing all my vitamin D?” angst, which also happens). I’m already a fan of Frahm’s calming instrumental sounds—so take that how you will, reader. But I also say with full certainty, if you didn’t attend Frahm’s recent appearance at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on May 20, you most certainly missed out.
The composer is known for his live solo shows, scaling mounds of analog gear and vintage instruments, pivoting between primarily improvisation and reflecting bits of his records. The result falls somewhere in the realm of stark classical and big, pulsing electronic songs. Tuesday was no different, with the Schnitz stage stacked as though it were staging a play set in a recording studio. The room was packed, the crowd eager, and scents of Santal 33 and patchouli duked it out for most potent. But once Frahm took the stage, everyone was still, and nobody said a peep until they were asked to.
Despite my avid listening, I find it difficult to identify Frahm’s songs by name—the music often feels limitless, unarched as something that begins and ends. It’s serious, often emotional music that if executed wrongly could feel melodramatic, but Frahm never veers into that disingenuous territory—his sounds remain honest and curious, which came through even more so during the live set. Live reactions to his music might seem embarrassing to the painfully self-aware, yet the way Frahm’s music evokes a response can be endearingly heartfelt to those open enough to the feeling. Frahm started the night by dipping his gloved hands in water and half-jokingly blessing the crowd, then took to his glass harmonica to play a slightly riffed “Harmonium in the Well.” Now, please pause your reading and look up a glass harmonica. Then imagine it glowing like a backlit crystal, light slating between the glass bowls as Frahm gently illuminated each note.
From there, Frahm dodged between nooks of gear, swelling beats and voices, then wiping them clean from the air, roughly 20 minutes at a time. At one point, he asked the audience to make animal sounds (we had to do a few rounds because, according to Frahm, we sounded too much like humans trying to sound like animals). Frahm recorded the noises, then gently looped them, sticky with clashing noises of an imperfect field recording, Frahm calling us into a deep humid forest of otherworldly analog textures, one on top of the next.
Frahm took time on the piano, too, for some of his more bare-bones, contemplative songs—there was something from his EP Day, and from Solo, but my memory couldn’t hold it, I didn’t think to break the spell of the night and write anything down. By the end of the roughly 90-minute set, I realized my hands had genuinely migrated—my right holding my husband’s, my left, with full sincerity, on my heart. It was that moving, people.