Nils Frahm - Day Vinyl LP

Nils Frahm presents a new collection of solo piano music, his first album since 2022's three-hour Music For Animals. Day was recorded in the summer of 2022 in complete solitude and away from his studio at Berlin's famed Funkhaus complex. Day may come as a surprise to those who, over the last decade, have watched Frahm shift slowly away from the piano compositions with which he first made his name in favor of a nonetheless still-distinctive approach that's considerably more instrumentally complex and intricately arranged. Indeed, Frahm has never been able to resist returning to his first love, and those who enjoyed earlier acclaimed albums like The Bells, Felt, and Screws will once again revel in Day's familiar, personal style. Day contains six tracks, three over the six-minute mark. Characterized by its confidential mood, the album confirms that, while Frahm is arguably now best known for elaborate, celebratory concerts calling upon an arsenal of pianos, organs, keyboards, synths, even a glass harmonica, he's still a prolific master of affecting simplicity, tenderness and romance. In 2021, having spent the early part of the pandemic arranging his archives, he released the 80 minute, 23-track Old Friends New Friends, a compilation of previously unreleased piano music intended to enable him to "start over" with a clean slate. Judging from the extended, ambient nature of Music For Animals, it proved a successful gambit, but Frahm has never been able to resist returning to his first love.