Graz

Nils Frahm has made a habit of the surprise drop — a new album with no warning, or a box-set of unreleased material appearing overnight — and his Piano Day 2021 offering is perhaps his most delightful yet. Graz, released on Erased Tapes, is his long-lost studio debut: recorded in 2009 as part of a thesis project while studying in the Austrian city, it sat unheard for a decade until the composer decided the anniversary of his own holiday deserved a proper excavation. Twelve years on, it arrives as both a time capsule and a missing piece of the puzzle.

For anyone who came to Frahm through All Melody or Spaces, Graz is a revelation — the sound of a young pianist discovering the tools he’d later rebuild his entire practice around. There are no Juno-60 choirs, no labyrinthine modular rigs, no field recordings. Instead there’s just Frahm, a grand piano and the room it lives in: the soft click of the sustain pedal, the air between notes, a composer listening back to himself and deciding to trust his instincts.

It’s a fiercely piano-first record. Lighter opens with a warm, unhurried melody that could have been written yesterday, whilst O I End lets a single chord hang and breathe before a sparse left hand wanders into the lower register. The centrepiece is Kurzum — at 8:38 the longest track here — a patient, near-minimal exploration that builds from one motif into something quietly majestic, closer in spirit to early Satie than to anything you’d file under dance music.

The record’s most curious moment is Hammers, a 1:51 duet with Peter Broderick, the violinist and composer whose own Erased Tapes work has long run parallel to Frahm’s. The two pianists trade clipped, percussive figures; it sounds less like a composition than a conversation, an inside joke between friends — and it’s the closest Graz gets to the playful energy of Frahm’s later live shows.

Graz is not the grand statement of a composer arriving fully formed — and that’s precisely why it’s so endearing. It captures the moment before everything, when the ideas were still taking shape, and confirms that Frahm’s signature — classical poise married to human warmth — was there from the very first note. For fans it’s an essential chapter; for newcomers, a beautiful place to start.