Some evenings are for reading and some are for listening. This autumn has mostly been the second kind, and mostly one pianist. A few things that have been playing in the background while the notebooks filled up.
Felt
Nils Frahm recorded Felt late at night, with a layer of felt laid over the piano strings so as not to wake the neighbours. You can hear the hammers, the pedals, his breathing. It is the most intimate piano record I know, and it is the one I put on when I sit down to write.
Empty, which came out in 2020, is in the same spirit: solo piano, very quiet, recorded years before it was released and left alone until then.
Live, in a small room
He is a different musician on stage: restless, moving between instruments, building a piece up out of loops until the room is full of it. This session for a radio station in Seattle is a good place to start.
His label, Erased Tapes, keeps a long and varied archive of quiet music, and it is a good thing to leave running through an afternoon.
Something to watch
And one film, which I come back to every autumn. A week of nights on the highest mountain in Spain, time-lapsed: clouds pouring over ridges like water, the Milky Way turning, a sandstorm lit by the moon. Four minutes, no words.