Nils Frahm - Encores 2

  • Four immersive neo-classical tracks to get lost in.
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  • Encores 2 is the second of two Encores EPs complementing Nils Frahm's All Melody album. That album, which followed a three-year break from touring, was recorded in a studio in Funkhaus Berlin, presenting a rich electro-acoustic sound that was as sprawling as the GDR-era building's reverberant walls. With all the recorded material generated by an array of keyboard instruments, strings, brass, percussion and even a choir, there was an idea to make All Melody a triple album. Instead, the focus became the 2018 release. Two EPs, Encores 1 and Encores 2, would follow, their sound crossing neo-classical, jazz, ambient and IDM. On one end, there's the hyperreal detail of Encores 1's creaking piano and harmonium pieces, which are so vivid you can almost hear the performer breathe. Then there's Encores 2's atmospheric swell of classical piano, strings and synth, played through an amplified stone well in Mallorca. The stone well method creates a calm whooshing that sounds like sea wind. It begins in the shuffling echo that opens "Sweet Little Lie," the first track, and ends with the cosmic oscillations of "Spells," the closer. Those tracks would sound worlds apart if not for "A Walking Embrace" and "Talisman," the compositions that fall between them. Each piece subtly introduces a new instrument—strings, bass marimba—to gorgeous piano and synth compositions, which finally all come together for "Spells," an immersive, 12-minute epic.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Sweet Little Lie A2 A Walking Embrace A3 Talisman B1 Spells
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