Nils Frahm & Anne Müller – 7 Fingers

Now Available: Just as his recent album with F.S. Blumm is released, Nils Frahm continues to churn out wonderful collaborative work, moving away from the solo piano pieces on The Bells and Wintermusick, to incorporate many different instruments and an amalgamation of styles…

On 7 Fingers, Anne Müller and Nils Frahm have composed quite a varied work, incorporating elegant modern classical movements that break away from the genre’s norm with IDM-styled tangents, creating a very unique album that ebbs and flows from track to track.

Anne Müller, known for her work with the Wolf-Ferrari-Ensemble, Sdnmt, Phillip Boa, and Klez.E, is really a performer to behold here, as her string orchestration is positioned front and center. Most of the songs develop around the sound of Müller’s cello, oftentimes traveling into unforeseen territory, surprising the listener, as in the second track, “7 Fingers”, when the listener first encounters the group’s foray into electronic pulses and blips. The combination works exceedingly well, as the pieces still develop with a classical framework and the introduction of electronic percussive elements enhances, not diminishes, the listening experience. In other words, the “clicks and cuts” feel as though they are a natural extension of the work and are not forced contrivances that disorient the listener. In “Let My Key Be C”, the opening birdsong chirps reveal a world of looping cello sounds, some of which extend and overtake the listener. Frahm’s piano keys unfurl to create a gelatinous mass of beauty, swirling around the speakers (or headphones for the full experience) before softening and finally, cutting off abruptly, leaving the listener to catch their breath.

For “Because This Must Be/Augmentation”, the centerpiece of the album, Müller and Frahm slow everything down to a crawl that escalates and shocks the listener with a clamor that makes the bones tremble. Shifting into the song’s second movement, the clamor transforms into a rarefied and graceful sequence of phrases elevating an already excellent work into near-perfection.

The album is sequenced in an extraordinary way; alternating between introspective classical pieces and glitchy, propulsive hallucinations creating an all-around, complete listening experience. 7 Fingers is an absolute necessity and will surely stand as one of the better releases of the year. – Review by Michael Vitrano for Fluid Radio

Available via HUSH Records here
Available via Experimedia: Vinyl CD

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