Clocking in at just over three hours (!), Music for Animals, the 14th solo album from German composer Nils Frahm is both a sprawling take on modern furniture music and intimate exploration of subjective natural melancholy.
Frahm's first release via his own LEITER imprint, Music for Animals, may seem initially intimidating or inaccessible. However, its tranquillity and depth demand only the amount of attention each listener wishes to offer, albeit with no less of an immersive experience, regardless of choice.
Effortlessly falling into all possible background scenarios, Music For Animals also marks Frahm's first studio material since 2018's All Melody and 2019's follow-up All Encores. Recorded over two years at his studio in Berlin's famed Funkhaus complex between 2020 and 2022, Music For Animals is an audio snapshot of that specific moment where the world's collective experience met its most existentially straining reality in recent memory. With it, loneliness and longing catalyzed its ten tracks into something ambitious and wholly compelling, even for an artist as dexterous as Frahm.
Of immediate note is the distinct lack of piano across any arrangement, which may come as a surprise given Frahm is the Piano Day founder and something of an instrument inventor (Klaven's' Model 450i). Instead, its primary instrument could be a hypothetical waterfall or a collection of still-branched leaves blowing in a storm. These are actless symphonies of subjective desire, whether you want to see the leaves fall or simply rustle; the waterfall roar or trickle. Ultimately, it is a low-toned, subdued experience throughout, with the perfect soundtrack for sensory alignment or simply nodding off to sleep.
To highlight specific tracks would be a disservice to the interpretive and complete nature of Music for Animals' shifting narrative. Still, instead, there are moments of visceral transcendence scattered throughout its micro-to-macro collection of individual moments. For example, there are the barely-there synths that drive along the lead single Right Right Right (the closest to a house/classical hybrid as the album gets), or the antithesis, the gradual synth deconstruction of Sheep in Black and White. There is also the drone/harmonica dance of Stepping Stone and throwback ambient strings of World of Squares. And throughout, there are sublime moments of delayed chord progressions, sometimes reaching nearly ten minutes to unfold.
Regardless of the track or moment, Music for Animals is a substantial collection of listeners' choices and an exciting take on the product/consumer relationship as a whole, where music always seems to need to do something useful (read: productive) like "Music for Sleeping" or "Music for Focus" playlists. There is, in fact, a slight tongue-in-cheek element to it all, as Music for Animals isn't actually created around a particular animal inspiration. On the contrary, Frahm simply says that the animals he had interacted with throughout the pandemic enjoyed it. Further evidence includes the definitely not apropos titled Briefly, which runs for 27 minutes.
Music for Animals is spacial music, exploring depth and subjectivity across its delicate sprawl. It is immersive, the very antithesis of linear composition. It is an estate of an album, with nooks, crevices, and rooms ripe for exploration. But, regardless of which realm of the multiverse you happen to explore it in, the album remains an experience rooted in that time and place. Music for Animals is ultimately anything you want it to be.
