F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm - Desert Mule

  • A different side of Nils Frahm.
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  • 2X1 = 4, the fourth collaborative album from F.S. Blumm and Nils Frahm, was recorded in 2016 and then endlessly fussed over in the years since. You can kind of tell—first track "Desert Mule" sounds like each artist tried to pull it in about 100 different directions. But the obsessive approach works for this dubby format, where sounds appear, reverberate into nothingness and then disappear, creating an exciting soundscape where it feels like anything is possible. "Desert Mule" stays at a heady simmer, focused around some brittle guitar noodling and rhythmic rattling that reminds me of Jan Jelinek, occasionally boiling over with bursts of delay. It's a different, flattering side of Frahm.
RA