Nils Frahm’s performance at East Perth Power Station for Perth Festival was like rarified poignancy in musical form. The performance itself felt oddly, at times, spiritual in nature. From the first note, the audience watched in enraptured science. It is highly unusual for people to be shushed for talking outside of the classical realm or a sit-down show. Still, anyone talking or being rambunctious at this performance was shushed heavily for lacking the required amount of reverence and deference to their fellow audience members.
Nils started the show playing an illuminated glass harmonica, a strange instrument that glowed as if it had fairies bottled in its glass-top structure. The object in itself, which resembled a steampunk contraption imbued with a spiritual, ethereal glow, had me fascinated by its look alone. The organic gentle noise it produced was a healing balm for the nerves.
From the performance, it was easy to see why Nils is internationally acclaimed. Renowned for his compositions that are both classically influenced but also moved in, out, and around electronica, Neil’s performance on the night was worthy of his many accolades. During the show, his masterful use of silence and gentle ambience mirrored unheard undulating rhythms of nature, the dance of trees, the fall of snow, and the change of season as he masterfully built up songs and brought them gently back down again. Even the more rapturous elements of the performance had an air of humility around them.
Humility is a word worth noting in the performance overall, as Nils took time to talk to the audience in gentle Scandinavian notes and repeatedly bowed. Nils held his bows for extended periods, almost as if in supplication to his audience, whose love of his work allows him, in turn, to do what he loves. This humility was so sincere, heartwarming, and cute.
At one point, he asked the audience to make the sounds of Australian songs. The result sounded like a jungle orgy in far North Queensland. He sampled these on a tape deck before looping them and combining them for what he described as his favourite song from his last album. To be so adroit and willing to co-produce his favourite work with a random audience, creating a hullaballoo is a testament to his heart and mind.
Another interesting feature of the performance was the stacked instruments arranged like two parallel cul-de-sacs in a city of high-rise buildings. Nils himself has remarked in interviews of his love of Bauhaus and form the following function, and that visual effect of these beautiful instruments stacked like architecture, and there is indeed something of it. If he weren’t obviously such a gentle soul, I would think that they also look like something of a mad scientist’s lab. If he is not this then perhaps he is something more esoteric and romantic, like a sonic alchemist.
C.J. O’HARTE
Nils Frahm appeared at the East Perth Power Station as part of Perth Festival on 26 & 27 Feb 2025. For more information on this past event, click here.
