On Music: Nils Frahm

I've purchased two tickets for Dan and I to hear and see the musician Nils Frahm perform at the Chicago Symphony Center. I did so on a whim and I didn't plan it, but once I saw the news from the CSC I immediately purchased them knowing that I would regret it later if I didn't. 

I've been listening to a lot of his work recently and cannot tell you how much it improves my day to day, night to night. For me, his music is a beautiful toning out of all noise, a symbiosis of the inner and outer worlds via acoustics, a focusing in on detail, and a control of chaotic forms. 

It's about vibe. Worrying less. Resting your eyes, your ears. Keeping your spirit high. Frahm has said as much. It might also be about slowing down. Thinking all the way through. Seeing clearly, hearing clearly. Equilibrium. Disassembling. Then putting things back together, in a new way, a dance always changing.

I think there's a bit of a bauhaus aesthetic going on here, and perhaps some minimalism too, a bit a folk, a cold technicality yet vibrating with warmth and color... jazz and classical, high and low. This entire genre (I don't really like that word. I'm learning to accept it.) is something I'm delving into so gratefully. It includes: Olafur Arnalds, Ludivico Einaudi, Brian Eno, Eluvium, Jon Hopkins, Max Richter, more. For now I'm listening to everything Nils.

The music is so wonderful for me because it encourages me to live a certain way. Like if I wanted to, I could live exactly how I choose to, if I would just take the reigns. The single word that comes to mind for me when listening to Frahm's music is simply this: restraint. And it teaches. And it is constant.

- F

P.S. One more -