German multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Nils Frahm‘s music sounds like no-one else’s, fusing classical, electronic and ambient elements through the delicate scores he writes for (sometimes prepared) piano and synth. Ever inventive and thoughtful, he’s joined now with his childhood friends Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Singwald to release the debut album from their project nonkeen. Gmeiner, Singwald and Frahm produced a radio show together as children essentially comprised of field recordings (ambient sounds from their lives, recordings of their teachers, recordings of the three practicing their instruments) which grew into musical collaboration as teenagers; they performed original material during the summers at Singwald’s uncle’s fairground. After mechanical tragedy struck during a performance in 1997, a malfunctioning carousel propelling its riders (none were thankfully killed) into the teens’ musical equipment, they went their separate ways.
Coming back together in their 20s, swearing that the past trauma wouldn’t cast its long shadow over their collaboration forever, Gmeiner, Singwald and Frahm started cautiously to play together again. Their debut album, The Gamble, is the outgrowth of their sessions together over the last eight years, both reworking their childhood pieces and improvising together on new experimental work, and will be released February 5, 2016 on Belgian label R&S Records.
The Gamble is available for preorder via iTunes and Bandcamp.
