Album Review: Nils Frahm - All Melody

For the last two years, Nils Frahm has been constructing his own studio space.

Saal 3 sits on the River Spree, as part of the historical 1950s East German Funkhaus, and features an entire pipe organ and mixing desk as well ample space for his many instruments. The complex was purpose-built by architects and acousticians as the broadcasting headquarters of the GDR's state radio arm. The irony of a free-spirited intellectual like Frahm occupying a former hub of propaganda and control is divine.

His seventh studio LP All Melody represents his desire to sweep away the conventions of previous albums and produce something far more immediate and unpredictable. It's an utterly beautiful album, full of wide-eyed innocence and patient experimentation, but despite several new textural elements and an absence of narrative, it sits comfortably next to just about any of the material he's produced before. Despite yearning to 'break free', All Melody demonstrates that Frahm still comfortably resides at the centre of his own perfect sonic world, taking his time to explore its corners and (re)define its edges. A valiant attempt to truly change is made by Human Range, but even by playing with woodwind and brass and wordless vocals he has simply discovered another side of the same coin.