Erased Tapes

Nils Frahm - Spaces

£26.99

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Spaces is Nils Frahm at his most unguarded, a live album stitched together from performances across roughly eighteen months on the road. Rather than polishing away the room noise, Frahm leans into it, you can hear chairs creak, audiences hold their breath, and his prepared piano and analogue synths breathe in real time. 'Says' is the centrepiece, a slow-building sequence that grows from a single repeated phrase into something enormous, and it's become one of his most loved pieces precisely because you can hear it being discovered live rather than composed in a studio. A brilliant record for anyone who thinks 'ambient' means background music, this one demands your full attention. The intimacy of the recorded performances — the connection between Frahm and his audience — is palpable. This is music at its most human. FFO: Ólafur Arnalds, Hania Rani, Max Richter

Tracklist

An Aborted Beginning
Says
Said and Done
Went Missing
Familiar
Improvisation for Coughs and a Cell Phone
Hammers
For - Peter - Toilet Brushes - More
Over There, It's Raining
Unter - Tristana - Ambre
Ross's Harmonium

Details

Release Date: 19th November 2013

Why We Love It

Spaces isn't a studio album at all, really — it's a collage built from over thirty live shows, stitched together from cassette and reel-to-reel recordings Nils Frahm made on tour. That means you get room noise, the odd cough, a ringing phone left deliberately in the mix, and it makes the whole thing feel remarkably alive. Frahm's piano and modular synth pieces breathe and stretch out in ways a studio take never would, and the audience becomes part of the music rather than something edited away. It's an unusually honest way to present a live document, and one of the most inventive records in the modern piano/ambient space.

Sam's Note

Listen for the room, not just the notes. The coughs and phone ringing are meant to be there, and once you accept that it's a genuinely lovely listen.

Sounds Like

• Olafur Arnalds
• Max Richter
• Hania Rani
• Jon Hopkins

Mood

• Intimate
• Warm
• Improvisatory
• Honest

Perfect For

• Reading
• Sunday mornings
• Late-night listening

12 Bar Listening Guide

First Listen

Reveals More

Atmosphere

Originality

Why This Album Matters

Released in November 2013 on Erased Tapes, Spaces was compiled by Nils Frahm from over thirty live concerts recorded across a two-year touring period, using whatever recording method was available at each show. Rather than smoothing over the imperfections of live performance, Frahm embraced them, and the record's honest, in-the-room quality helped cement his reputation as one of the leading figures in the wave of modern composers bringing intimate, improvisatory piano and electronic music to a much wider audience.

Nils Frahm is a German composer and producer whose work sits somewhere between classical piano tradition, ambient electronics and the DIY spirit of a home studio built from scratch. A key artist on the Erased Tapes label alongside Olafur Arnalds, he's built a devoted following through his genuinely inventive live shows, which often feature his own custom-built instruments, and remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary neo-classical and ambient music.

Room noise and a ringing phone, left in deliberately — the audience becomes part of the music.

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