MEREMOL ☂

bitzlbitzlr:

Nils Frahm - ‘You’

“As you can imagine, it is really bad news for a pianist when he gets diagnosed with a broken thumb,” writes Berlin composer and musician to his listeners, via a letter to label Erased Tapes.

You see Nils, so dedicated to his music, sleeps in a bunk directly above his studio. Recently, he fell from his bed and broke a thumb. 

As you can imagine, a pianist values his digits. In an effort to deal with the trauma Nils records nine intimate recordings with his nine working fingers - the resulting album is simple yet musically intelligent, pensive and really quite gripping.  

Songs for 9 Fingers or Screws is available as a free download - released September 20th, Nils’ 30th birthday. Get it from screws.durtonstudio. It will be available on vinyl later this year - pre-order here. 

LP Stream

Full letter from Nils below.

I am sitting in front of a sheet of paper. My right hand is bending over my left thumb. The first day I got out of my cast I could bend it by 15°. Now I am already at 50° and that makes me happy. Things are going uphill…

As you can imagine, it is really bad news for a pianist when he gets diagnosed with a broken thumb. That day I was sitting in the emergency room, feeling rather dizzy while thinking of a zillion shows coming up and all the people involved around it. I realised in that moment how busy things have become. It is hard to turn down interesting projects and opportunities, since I surely love my work. It actually never felt like work. Playing piano and playing it for wonderful people is the greatest joy I can imagine.

For a couple of days I felt like this all could be over. How pathetic. But hey – also feeling sorry for yourself has its place somewhere. All of a sudden I had so much time, an unexpected holiday. I cancelled most of my schedule and found myself being a little bored. Even though my doctor told me not to touch a piano for a while, I just couldn’t resist. I started playing a silent song with 4 fingers on my left and the remaining 5 on my right hand. I set up one microphone and recorded another tune every other night before falling asleep.

The day I got rid of my cast I had recorded 9 little tunes. They have helped me feel less annoyed about my accident and reminded me that any good is something I can only achieve, when I am making the most out of what I’ve got.

Thank you all for listening!

With lots of love,

Nils

[facebook.com/nilsfrahm]