F.S.Blumm & Nils Frahm - Music for lovers Music versus time

Music for lovers, music versus time. Isn’t love the opposite of time? Time can seem to go on forever when you are in love, but the moment you begin to grasp at the passing days, hours, minutes, then love is already beginning to decay. ‘You can’t hurry love’, as they say.

On this album, F.S.Blumm and Nils Frahm took the time to appreciate all the tiny details in a sound that many would never take the time to notice at all. Taking recordings culled from previous sessions of friends playing cellos, trumpets, vibraphones and more, the two Berliners began to improvise around these recordings and craft them into something far more abstract and expressive. Unleashed from the constraints of a ‘pop song’, these recordings began to take on a life of their own and whereas once they existed simply to serve the song, here they develop their own language where hair brushing against string or air vibrating across reed speaks volumes. To call this album a remix-album-in-disguise wouldn’t do it justice, but somewhere in there, remnants of some of Blumm’s ‘pop’ work with Old Splendifolia and Bobby & Blumm can be discovered.

For those people out there who categorise their record collection by genre, this album may cause difficulties. From one minute to the next, you can be thrown from the off-kilter midnight jazz of ‘Heber’ into the Ali Farka Toure-esque space lullaby of closing track, ‘Wanda Marimba’. Blumm & Frahm’s use of subtle processing and manipulation of the sound may at times remind listeners of Sweden’s Tape: a comparison not given lightly. Both Blumm’s expertise on guitar and Frahm’s on piano are shown through restraint rather than through unnecessary ‘over-playing’, and ultimately their restraint is echoed through the other the aspects of this album.

There is an uncanny depth here which goes beyond what might first appear as simple arrangements. Even though stripped to their core, each songs holds enough goodness to continue to surprise with every listen. To unlock every hidden asset of these short stories in song form, you must let your thoughts wander through the annals created by the musical musings of two musicians putting love into every note. Take your time.