Handling

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Nils Frahm and F.S.Blumm share their fifth collaborative album, ‘Handling’. Containing three tracks but 40 minutes long, it finds the duo advancing from 2021’s dub-influenced ‘2X1= 4’, deploying its lessons in ambitious new territory that also nods to earlier collections. “Making music with Frank is always worthwhile,” says Frahm, who’s just completed over three years of touring 2022’s ‘Music For Animals’, “because it’s so much fun to work on something so unique.” Recorded at LEITER’s studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus, the album is out on vinyl and via all digital platforms. If Frahm described ‘2X1=4’ as “only as much of a dub record as the ones before are jazz,” Blumm, a revered mainstay of Germany’s underground for a quarter of a century, considers ‘Handling’ more akin to a field recording. He compares it to animals scuttling through a forest at sunrise, encountering a miniature chamber orchestra tucked away among the trees. “They’re playing little instruments, but just one note at a time. There’s one note here, the next person plays another, then someone plays one more, before two minutes later the first person comes back and plays two. It’s a society that doesn’t exist, with little characters rushing around, running and hiding.” That their collaboration is built on a friendship and mutual admiration dating back to the early 2000s enables an unusual level of trust. “We’re both prime movers for this creative momentum,” Blumm states. It’s significant, too, that both are known to operate in their own distinct manner. “I have this chaotic artistic approach,” he adds, “and, in a way, Nils puts things in a straight line. But he puts them in at unexpectedly strange angles, things you didn’t even realise existed, and somehow, in the end, it’s balanced.” What emerges – combining the language, poetry and communication of their first records with their last’s studio experimentation – captures the essence of what always makes Blumm and Frahm’s music so idiosyncratic. “Somehow, we’ve created these genres for ourselves, and now we’ve combined them. We’re quoting ourselves, but creating something fresh. It’s us, but as lots of particles, out of which we’ve created another version. It’s not Frank, it’s not Nils. We’ve become a new persona.” And, as such, it’s really not important who said this, because ‘Handling’ speaks for itself. ‘Handling’ is out now on all digital platforms and on limited edition vinyl. Show more