LISTENING SESSION #01 :
F.S.BLUMM & NILS FRAHM - HANDLING (LEITER, 2025)
SEPTEMBER. 20, 2025 @ 20.30h
Doors open half an hour before listening.
Handling is the fifth record by F.S.Blumm & Nils Frahm, a long going collaborative project that started with their first release on Sonic Pieces in 2010. The album is released September 19th on Leiter and contains three tracks in a duration of 40 minutes and finds the duo advancing from 2021’s dub-influenced 2X1=4, deploying its lessons in ambitious new territory that also nods to their earlier records on Sonic Pieces. The record was recorded at Berlins Funkhaus as with previous albums, and sounds impaccable as always.
The drawings on the album cover are made by F.S.Blumm, who is also our current artist in residence with his latest artworks “Picking Patterns” both gracing our walls as well as being featured in the latest mi - so editions art book series.
F.S.Blumm & representatives from Leiter will be
present for an introduction and possible Q&A.
This event is FREE & limited to 10 seats.
We listen together in silence for the duration of the record on our unique, Japanese handmade Listude speakers.
We welcome you to browse records before & after listening.
Please arrive on time to avoid disturbing the listening experience.
Drinks will be available on donation.
If Frahm described 2X1=4 as “only as much of a dub record as the ones before are jazz,” Blumm, a revered mainstay of Germany’s underground for a quarter of a century, considers Handling more akin to a field recording. He compares it to animals scuttling through a forest at sunrise, encountering a miniature chamber orchestra tucked away among the trees. “They’re playing little instruments, but just one note at a time. There's one note here, the next person plays another, then someone plays one more, before two minutes later the first person comes back and plays two. It's a society that doesn't exist, with little characters rushing around, running and hiding.
”To some this may sound whimsical, but it’s unusually apposite, distantly echoing Mark Hollis’ late-period aesthetic: “Silence is above everything.” As a touchstone, however, the duo prefers the lingering shadow of Luc Ferrari’s late 1960s Presque Rien, famed for its musique concrète and innovative use of stereo. Either way, Handling’s three pieces are exquisitely detailed and constantly surprising, its language Blumm and Frahm’s own. Their scrupulous arrangements exploit a magic cabinet of instruments, among them pianos, celestas and cristal bachets, glockenspiels, guitars and multiple forms of percussion. “When we wrote ‘metal bowl’ in the credits,” Frahm smiles, “Frank probably used fifteen!” - Leiter press