Electro-classical composer Nils Frahm has announced a new double album, Old Friends New Friends, coming in December via manager Felix Grimm’s label LEITER. It follows Graz, which came out last March, and comprises 23 solo piano tracks Frahm recorded between 2009 and 2021. Along with the announcement is a new song, “All Numbers End.”

“Maybe I could say it’s an album I worked on for 12 years, and finally I have enough material?” Frahm says in a press release, explaining how the pandemic gave him some time to arrange his archives, thus producing a work that is somewhere between an LP and a compilation. He adds:

I forgot that some tracks are 10 years old, some two, and they’re all played on different pianos. Instead I remembered how, as a fan, I love albums like this. With a lot of my records there’s a point where you feel, “This is the centrepiece,” but here I wasn’t really worrying about that. It still feels like my universe, though, and I’m proud that all these things which I never found a way to unite before now work together. It’s like I tossed flowers indiscriminately into a vase and then realised it looked exactly right.

Listen to “All Numbers End.”

TRACKLIST:
01 “4:33” (A TRIBUTE TO JOHN CAGE)
02 “LATE”
03 “BERDUXA”
04 “RAIN TAKE”
05 “TODO NADA”
06 “WEDDINGER WALZER”
07 “IN THE MAKING”
08 “FURTHER IN THE MAKING”
09 “ALL NUMBERS END”
10 “THE IDEA MACHINE”
11 “THEN PATTERNS”
12 “CORN”
13 “NEW FRIEND”
14 “NILS HAS A NEW PIANO”
15 “ACTING”
16 “AS A REMINDER”
17 “ICED WOOD”
18 “STRICKLEITER”
19 “THE CHORDS”
20 “THE CHORDS BROKEN DOWN”
21 “FORGETMENOT”
22 “RESTIVE”
23 “OLD FRIEND”

Old Friends New Friends is out 12/3 via LEITER.