Nils Frahm
Adelaide Festival Theatre 4 December 2019.
The crowd at the Adelaide Festival Centre came from two very different camps on the Tuesday night. The majority: ready to jet, all the way from their first cigarette to their last dying day… The remainder: an artier, more bearded crowd, quietly excited to see a rather whimsical solo piano explorer in the Dunstan Playhouse.
The first thing you think when entering the theatre is: how many are there supposed to be in this band again? One? It’s an imposing arsenal of gear which greets your eyes; two giant bays of towering gear – not amps, but all stacks of pianos and keyboards, with some homely furniture holding some of it up, including what looks like a library card holder with loads of tiny drawers. A giant black grand piano on the right of the stage, various keyboards and synthesisers, including Frahm’s beloved Roland Juno 60. It’s a gear-head’s wet dream, obscure late 20th C equipment everywhere. Unusually, there’s a full mixing desk on the stage. The need for Frahm to control all aspects of his sound and performance is evident. This is also reflected in the conspicuous lack of digital gear. Even the echo effects in play are not tiny pedals but instead are the rare and temperamental tape-loop based Roland Space Echo units (3 of.)
Bounding onto the stage, Frahm acknowledges the crowd and gets straight into it – the first sounds from his micro upright piano twinkle like a glockenspiel in a cave, and then Frahm migrates a hand to harmonium, a traditional devotional instrument. Already he’s breaking rules, swapping instruments, failing to introduce songs by name, turning his back to play, and letting us see him tweak effects units on the fly. With lids off pianos and effect units, it’s quite illustrative of his approach to music – no hidden circuitry, understanding the guts of your instrument, and priming sound over posturing. Why have a compact digital sampler when you can have a giant white box full of tape loops, if it sounds better, more honest?
Frahm soon moves onto a small upright-style piano, which must output a very quiet sound, as it was noticeable hearing his breathing, the keys gently clacking, and a rather high noise floor. Disconcerting, if you’re used to the processed sound world we often inhabit, but the particularly even timbre across the instrument was fascinating, gentle, right over the spectrum of notes. The key clacks were perfectly in time, and it didn’t detract from the song. Piano is a percussion instrument, after all.
These are long songs, in fact over the hour and a half of the concert, only about nine songs are covered, but with a classical nod, many of these had clear movements introduced by a new instrument or tempo. It’s a shock in the second song when a tight drum loop, in 6/4 time, enters the soundstage. Frahm is a master at setting up his instruments to interlock, driven by seemingly simple loops, with mad, near-dj skills switching them in and out, bringing an intense snap to a snare or a fast dub delay to a sequence. For the second song he dashes between the two setups, keeping the machines swiss-clocking together and jumping from this to that. It makes sense why his stage garb is loose-fit and comfortable, with quiet rubber soled shoes befitting an acrobat. Clacking Cuban heels not for this gig.
After a few songs, the artist picks up the microphone, and with Deutsche accent, bids our tolerance as he continues to jump between instruments, drawing us again into his process. He’s funny, as he openly attempts to be sure he has recalled each required setting on keyboards, and he elucidates how a linear concentration span doesn’t help when attempting to regale an audience, particularly if there’s so much else to get just right technically at the time. A perfect gig never happens, he says, but for his audiences I’d say it’s frequent. Take all the time you need, was our feeling. The city had not seen Frahm perform here since his “pub” gig in 2014 at The Gov, which he noted was a longer gap than he had hoped. I preferred this theatre show being seated, with less clinking of glasses.
It was exhilarating being absorbed into some of the repetitive, arpeggiating keyboard lines, particularly during “Says” which is an undeniable highlight. Later, “Said and Done” from the same live album, Spaces (2013) came alive as it slowly morphed and grew in scope and intensity, modern classical in nature at the start and then moving to something more akin to trance techno. But it all fits – there are few boundaries for Frahm, and the possibility of song beyond genre comes alive. It’s akin to the 90% of the brain matter we are said to be limited from accessing, hearing the movements expand and shift radically. A shout out must be given to the lighting engineer – there were no colours, just the warm white lights, pulsing supportively with heartbeats of their own to support the sequences. During one propulsive section the lights lit one after the other in sequence across from left to right, mimicking lights on an analog drum machine perhaps.
One surprising moment of the set came from material off All Melody, his last album proper, where suddenly glorious female choirs appeared out of thin air. Conjured up by the gorgeous white Mellotron unit, an early tape-loop sampler, which is responsible for the flute in Strawberry Fields as well as You Am I’s Hourly Daily album, among other classics. But the choir sound is something delightfully human among the hammered strings and synths, suddenly the stage doesn’t feel so lonely.
The 90 minute concert had a timeless quality, and Frahm’s second short monologue on the microphone also had a light touch, where we were asked to play along and skip the long mindless tumult of clapping and whooping which separates main show from encore, and expect him back on stage very quickly. Indeed true to his word, he emerged right away with sparkling golden liquid in a wine glass for a final two songs. In parallel with his music, there is a gentle invitation for contact, investigation, and setting aside of preconceptions. A masterful performance at the end of a long tour from the modern classical star. Frahm has certainly brought a certain cachet back to the concept of the one-man band, but it’s good to see he still has the visibly loud socks I recall from primary school when seeing one Dan Burt, Entertainer.
EminentlyListenable 