Nils Frahm

Berlin, Germany

Nils Frahm, born in 1982, works as a composer and producer from his Berlin-based Durton Studio, where he has collaborated with contemporaries such as Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds, Anne Müller, Deaf Center, Efterklang and Dustin O’Halloran. His unconventional approach to an age-old instrument, played contemplatively and intimately, has won him fans around the world, including Thom Yorke, who featured one of his songs in Radiohead’s HQ office chart.

After the solo piano works Wintermusik (2009) and The Bells (2009), October 10th 2011 saw the release of Felt. Having recorded his previous album live in a large, reverberant church, Frahm now invites you to put on your headphones and dive into a world of microscopic and delicate sounds — so intimate that you could be sitting beside him. Recorded late at night in the silence of his studio in Berlin, the album grew out of a practical need:

“Originally I wanted to do my neighbours a favour by damping the sound of my piano. If I want to play piano during the quiet of the night, the only respectful way is by layering thick felt in front of the strings and using very gentle fingers. It was then that I discovered that my piano sounds beautiful with the damper.”

Captivated by this sound, he placed the microphones so deep inside the piano that they were almost touching the strings, bringing into the recordings sounds most producers would try hard to hide: his breathing, the scraping of the piano’s action, the creaking of the wooden floorboards — all as loud as the music.