Nils Frahm returns to Šiška! After last year’s outstanding solo concert performance, this time Nils is accompanied by two of his childhood friends, with whom he has revived the electronic band Nonkeen.
nonkeen is accompanied on tour by Italian electroacoustic composer Andrea Belfi, who will provide a fitting introduction with his solo performance on drums and electronics.
Nils Frahm, Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Singwald combine and process old recordings, tapes, various analogue sound generators and new synthesiser antics to revive the noble spirit of krautrock and enliven it with the rhythmic and sonic qualities of the present. The Gamble album is released on 5. In February, on the legendary R&S Records label, Kino Šiška will be one of the selected venues for their first tour.
The first Nonkeen album consists of recordings made over a period of ten years during Nils Frahm’s performances with his childhood friends Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Singwald in a variety of simple halls, when Frahm remembered to press REC and the audio cables were not exactly broken again. Gmeiner and Frahm attended the same primary school in a rural suburb of Hamburg, where their shared interest in sound recording led to a lasting friendship. In the second year of school, they started to make a radio show together, using random sounds from the school area, teachers’ voices, and recording themselves learning to play instruments, all using simple children’s cassette recorders.
In the summer of 1989, an East German schoolboy, Sebastian Singwald, spent two weeks at the Frahm and Gmeiner Schools as part of a sports exchange with a young East German athletics team. When he arrived there with his battered cassette recorder around his neck, Frahm and Gmenier were impressed by the exotic East German technology and befriended him as they discussed the technical aspects and compared devices. Singwald, after returning to the Karlshorst district of Berlin, became their East German correspondent, “Korrespondent für körperliche Betätigung”, sending them reports on their adventures at school and recordings of sporting events. Frahm and Gmeiner were encouraged by the growing interest of schoolchildren in their show to start focusing on musical breaks between reports on school life. They played, performed and arranged an eclectic mix of children’s folk songs, pop music they heard on the radio, classical music and improvised songs, recycling practically everything they came across. Singwald added recordings of his bass to the tracks.
When the Berlin Wall came down, Gmeiner and Frahm couldn’t wait to visit Singwald and play together as a band. Singwald’s uncle invited them to play their original music at his amusement park in Plänterwald during the summer holidays. Their parents, moved by the idea of a reunified Germany, encouraged their friendship and extended stays in East Berlin. The children performed as a band in an amusement park for several weeks each summer. In the summer of 1997, when they were all 15 years old, their musical careers were interrupted by an accident, which also ended their collaboration. Their performance was abruptly interrupted when the seats on the chains broke off a nearby carousel and two participants were thrown into the stage. One of the victims landed feet-first in the bass drum, while the other crashed into Singwald’s bass amp. While the wounded man was being put into the ambulance, Gmeiner, Frahm and Singwald left their broken instruments, gave up music together and went their separate ways.
Gmeiner, Frahm and Singwald, now all living in Berlin in their late thirties, decided, drunk on reunion, that they would no longer allow the past to influence their lives and continue to cast a shadow over their band. Slowly and carefully, they began to play again and to meet in Singwald’s basement for long experimental rehearsals, recorded on cassette recorders, just like in the old days. They listened nostalgically to their childhood recordings, added something here and there, sampled something else. After eight years, the album came out of this process quite naturally.
The tracks on The Gamble were originally recorded with four cassette recorders connected to even more primitive singing microphones, and sometimes Frahm would put a good recording on a bad one just because he was confused. Only the very first recordings were acceptable, so they did not want to rehearse or record several times to change or improve them. But it all really depended on what ended up on the tape, which meant that chance became the fourth member of the cast. Every so often, they would take the tapes to Frahm’s studio, listen to them, choose their favourite parts and put them on the computer, which allowed them to continue working, as certain sections were edited or overdubbed. The tapes were then reused for new recordings.
When they listened together to music they had recorded years ago, it was easier for them as a band to turn their sound in a more expressive direction. Although they started out as an experimental ensemble, they took their work very seriously throughout, yet they kept their minimalist recording capacities and still let chance play its part through the unreliable cassette recorders and a whole range of cheap recording devices they used. No one ever knew what anything would sound like, just as with shooting on film, the secret is kept until the film is developed – sometimes there was a “double exposure” or the tape was accidentally played backwards. In addition, the devices, which varied the speed of the motors, brought to life other fantastic sounds – previously unheard, unimaginable and, above all, always unexpected. Such inevitable incidents could have perfected the piece, or just as likely destroyed it completely.
But other factors besides Gmeiner, Frahm, Singwald and coincidence contributed to the recordings – friends like Andrea Belfi, who brought some character to them during the filming, and locations like the apartment in Copenhagen where they went on holiday and where they still owe their neighbours an apology. It wasn’t always easy for Gmeiner, Frahm and Singwald to find the time to get together and record or mix, but eventually they realised that they had reached a stage where they didn’t need to change anything anymore. And he played his final role, bringing Frahm and Renaard Vandepapelier together at the Manheim meeting.
After that, it didn’t take long for the ink to dry on the contract with the legendary electronic and experimental label R&S Records. nonkeen felt they could come out of the basement again.
We will see and hear them in Šiška too!
Andrea Belfi is a drummer, composer and experimental musician. Over the course of twenty years, from his early years in various punk bands, he has gradually developed a distinct drumming style and increasingly intertwined his experiences in experimental music, electronica, rock and improvisation. With hypnotic rhythms and textures, it creates exciting sound fields that draw the listener in. He has released five solo albums and more than 50 collaborations with various artists on prominent labels such as ROOM40, Miasmah, Häpna, Die Schachtel, Constellation, Blue Chopsticks. The list of artists Andrea Belfi has worked with includes Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, David Grubbs, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nils Frahm and many others.
Tickets: EUR 16 pre-sale / EUR 18 on the day of the concert.
Organised by Kino Šiška and Kataman.