Photo: Press
Nonkeen is the new project of Nils Frahm and his fellow tape-loving friends. Born out of a mutual love for sound recording, Frahm and fellow band members Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Sigwald developed the basis of a long-lasting friendship through their school radio show, broadcasting sounds and documenting school life in Hamburg during the reformation era.
More than most, The Gamble’s context and historical journey bleed into its musical aesthetic. The captured sounds of childhood, teachers’ voices and their own musical performances as adolescents, all recordings of which were replayed and revisited in the studio as the launchpad for the band’s musical direction.
The trio may have officially formed sooner had it not been for the tragic events at a performance in 1997. Playing one of many summer holiday shows at a Planterwald fairground - owned by Sigwald’s uncle - the chained seats of a carousel above broke off, with two passengers crashing into the stage. Shaken, the then 15 year-olds let go of their collective endeavour and went their separate ways.
Well into their twenties the guys finally decided to resurrect their collaborative ways, spending countless experimental sessions listening back to their childhood recordings, overdubbing sections, sampling others and bouncing isolated phrases for digital tweaking. Most compelling, is the band’s insistence to never practicing their songs - a fourth band member they like to call chance.
And, as chance would be a fine thing - it is. The Gamble concocts a modern new-age blend from the spiritual fringes of electronica. Opener ‘The Invention Mother’ swirls in a beatless haze of emotion, rolling into the gentle tembres and sweet finger picking of ‘Saddest Continent on Earth’. The album doesn’t wallow in woozy dreamland though, and spikes into life with rapid, drum-drubbing cuts like ‘Ceramic People’ - a kaleidoscopic headfirst down a well of melancholic jazz.
Last year’s single ‘Chasing God Through Palmyra’ and ‘Animal Farm’ ambles into techier, programmed beat territory, the latter of which muddles with heavily pitched-down vocal samples - one can only imagine it’s a former teacher.
All-in-all, It’s a meditative, spacious and richly rewarding ride. And if the album’s name is a nod to their fourth member, chance, the gamble has paid off.
