Nils Frahm

Encircled and deep in his complex myriad of controls and keys, Frahm cuts a lonely figure at this immense former GDR recording hall in east Berlin.

But the image belies reality, for the German musician, composer, and record producer wastes no time in uniting with his surrounding audience.

We’re congregated at the iconic Funkhaus, Frahm’s long-time recording base. It’s way past the warehouses, the factories, the relocated clubs and the empty plots of land that provide a fitting backdrop to the more redolent parts of tonight’s two-hour set.

With safety gloves squeezed on, he immediately creates warmth, opening the evening on his new addition, the glass harmonica, described somewhere as the world’s most dangerous instrument.

It’s a reminder of Frahm’s appetite for fresh elements; some of the sounds emanating from that rotating bank of shimmering glass disks came from his wife during a visit to his studio, according to reports. Equally, it’s not just his audience he unifies, as an instrument that dates back to the days of King Friedrich der Grosse sits alongside Frahm’s main stack of synths, Rhodes and Roland keyboards and looming control desk.

From that initial warm glow to a cool air, Frahm somehow manages to change the temperature of this captivated room; there’s a deftness of touch that has you reaching for the fragility of Talk Talk’s 1991 album, Laughing Stock.

Apart from the occasional clanging of a knocked over glass bottle, not a sound is to be heard from the timber floor. There’s the odd fan perched high on a ledge, and mums-to-be horizontal and resting their backs under Frahm’s monitors.

It’s as intimate and immersive as it can get before Frahm goes even further and asks his audience to make the noise of their favourite animal, then instantly loops the recording back.

Throughout the evening, Frahm balances the intense and playful, switching between the soothing, the jolting and, with choral samples, the stirring, before joking about the farce of an encore ritual he will play out to rapturous applause.

With a three-hour album Music for Animals just released, Frahm will soon be leaving his Funkhaus base to head out on the road. I worry for the fragility of that glass harmonica.

PIC: Fran Burrows