Erased Tapes Vinyl & CDs

Review: Iceland's Olafur Arnalds (Kiasmos) and German multi-instrumentalist Nils Frahm team up again for some breathtaking excursions in classical/ambient crossover bliss. Frahm's sombre piano passages gently dance over Arnalds' serene soundscapes and eerie field recordings on this bittersweet and emotive journey. What was meant to be a one hour video recording of the duo in action turned out to be an eight hour long improvisation session and these are some of the segments of the wonderful marathon recording. We particularly enjoyed the gorgeously haunting electronic soul captured on "23:52" where those analogue synth strings just rise and rise to an epic climax.

Review: RECOMMENDED
Even the most determinedly understated chin-strokers will likely have emitted a squeal of delight when this one was announced. Everyone's favourite electronic producer-cum-contemporary composer (or vice versa?) releasing his latest works of art across two media - namely an album on cult hero label Erased Tapes, and a movie available on highbrow streaming service Mubi.

This is the audio, and while nobody who caught the video when it was available to view on-demand could argue this is just as powerful on its own, the solo sound is still an intoxicating and compelling ride. 'The Dane' is classy piano bliss, '#2' sits in the big room electronica end of things, 'Fundamental Values' is a scatty, broken ambient journey to the edges of drum 'n' bass, 'Enters' opens on long, ambient refrains.

Review: In 2018, Nils Frahm initiated the "Encores" series: a trilogy of EPs exploring different aspects of his musical world. Here, those sets get gathered together on vinyl for the very first time. Listened to in sequence, it sees the Berlin-based pianist and composer offer up solo acoustic pieces for piano and harmonium (tracks 1 to 5), before layering up piano, processed field recordings and complimentary instrumentation on a suite of sublime ambient tracks (6 to 9). The final section of the album - originally "Encores 3" - sees him flip the script entirely, working almost exclusively with a combination of modular and analogue synthesizers and electronically processed voices. That the collection hangs together as a coherent album despite these stylistic shifts is testament to Frahm's abilities both as a performer and producer.

Review: Coming from a classical piano background, Nils Frahm has certainly turned into one dark dude! Having already released plenty of works on a myriad of labels, he lands on London-based Erase Tapes with what is probably one of his wildest pieces of music to date. Spanning 12 tracks in total, Frahm goes from joyful odes to the piano over to psychedelic synth improvisations to what sound like intricate tape manipulations, nutty drum-machine programming and a bag full o'field recordings. If you're into the idea of Tchaikovsky on some serious amounts of stimulants then look no further, this guy is shaping the way pianos are played...