Nils Frahm came to perform at the Perth Festival recently. If you don’t know, Nils Frahm is one of the best of the best, and if you don’t know his name and are into that soft, minimalist, film-score-y, tactile piano-y music, look through his albums and find one you’ve unknowingly listened to.
For as timeless as his music can be, his setup is solidly set in a retro 70’s vibe – almost everything is wood-panelled, small glowing LEDS bleeped and blooped like an old NASA computer, the lights were at a constant incandescent orange – all that was missing was a potted monstera plant and a microwave. The collection of instruments on display were impressive: a Rhodes, a Mellotron, Moogs, Junos, effect modules, and drum machines for all you synth-heads out there, and a pedal organ, upright piano with all the strings on the bottom, and miscellaneous percussion things for everyone else. My favourite, and the star of the show, was hidden under an auspicious metal box on top of the organ, which I will divulge in time.
But not before quickly commenting on Ganavya, the opening act that feels so insane not to put as the headliner. Ganavya, supported by Miriam Defris on harp, brought this immediate air of comfort and ease within the air of the East Perth Power Station (not particularly a comfortable or eased environment, might I add). Her set was not long or intricate, but incredibly effective and relaxing. Ganavya sings in her native Tamil tongue with this innate beauty; notes flowing so graciously like thread in a tapestry.
Ganavya, supported by Miriam Defris. Photography by Sophie Minissale.
Nils Frahm set up quite quickly after Ganavya finished, and opened the metal box to reveal this alien artifact of an instrument: what a quick Google search after the show revealed to be a glass armonica. This instrument is very clean and pure in its tone – like the ringing in the ear. Frahm played with the armonica in solo, surrounded by mist and smoke, for a fair while, with the audience kept in mouth-gaping awe.
As Frahm extended his solo to other instruments, his performance style became apparent as this frantically-contained mastery; Frahm plays electronics like he’s defusing a bomb, running between keyboards and synths with this engaging hurriedness. There’s also an evocativeness in his improvisation – the show’s title “Music for Perth” basically a fun way to say that the show is improvised (at least partially), but it always felt like it was a direct response to the city: the skyscrapers adorned with mining company logos, black swans floating along the river, the distant hills framing of the horizon, the emptiness of the galleria. I doubt Frahm looked deep into the cultural monoliths of so-called “Perth”, but his music was in some ways like a horoscope: so specifically vague as to be able to perfectly impose your own perspective. As he finished his improvisation, he bowed and thanked the audience profusely, as if he finished his show in a half-hour. He then carried on.
Nils Frahm. Photography by Sophie Minissale.
His next work involved audience participation – asking for human-made animal sounds. Frahm emphasised that we should take silences, but alas, everyone wanted to do their best kookaburra impression, which was, on the whole, not bad. He then took the recording of those sounds, looped it, and slowly built a sound world. If the first piece felt like a reflection on Perth as a place, this one felt like a reflection on Perth as a people – almost like an anthropological David Attenborough.
It was in this piece where he first played upright piano, the only instrument that wasn’t treated like it was going to explode. Instead, it felt like he had some unspoken secret that he desperately wanted to share, but just couldn’t. Every so often he would look out to the audience with this look of both hope and despair, with some important words at the precipice of his lips, and then he turns his head away, to look down at his fingers gently tickling the ol’ ivories.
Nils Frahm. Photography by Sophie Minissale.
The rest of his music went by in a somewhat blur – this meditative, atmospheric music is amazing, but the washy, ambient textures makes it hard to distinguish pieces in my memory. An odd point in the show is that he ended one piece by moving back to the glass armonica, which felt like a circular moment of storytelling. After the last note ended, he did his deep, grateful bows as usual and walked off stage… only to grab a glass of wine and start on the actual last song. It’s strange to have a fake out when it felt like such a nice ending, but it was iconic, I’ll give him that.
Seeing the East Perth Power Station fill with people to see ambient electronic music fills my heart, and though it was The World-Renowned Nils Frahm, there’s an optimistic part of me that hopes shows like this encourage more people to seek the Locally-Renowned. Here’s also hoping that we didn’t scare Nils Frahm off from coming back to Perth with our intense-but-surprisingly-good kookaburra impressions.