Day Nils Frahm

Album review

A year and a half after his supersized ambient album Music for Animals (ten tracks, each lasting around twenty minutes), Nils Frahm has returned to solo piano music with this series of six pieces written at the height of summer 2022. LEITER, the label founded by the German pianist and his manager Felix Grimm, described it as “far from his Funkhaus studio in Berlin.” This is a mark of authenticity for a record on which we can hear traces of the intimate production style that made a success out of his album Felt (2012), with its ambient soundscape and piano mechanics. On Day, it’s a nonchalant Nils Frahm that shows up for “You Name It,” like a teenager who can’t seem to get out of bed. He stays firmly under the covers for “Tuesdays,” while the autumn is more prevalent than the summer on the single “Butter Nuts.” He is more inspired on “Hands On,” which sounds like the faraway echoes of Neil Young’s piano playing, and we are finally reunited with Nils Frahm’s magic, his musical balancing act that is so very intoxicating, on “Towards Zero,” with its hauntingly baroque motif that leaves us in suspense. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz