What would you do if you broke your thumb? Yours truly would probably spend as much time as possible bitching and moaning and cursing out the entire world for conspiring against me. But not Nils Frahm. No — when piano player Nils Frahm breaks his thumb he takes a deep breath, collects himself, disobeys his doctor’s orders of “don’t even think about touching your piano,” and goes ahead and uses his 9 remaining digits to record one song per night for nine straight nights, resulting in his achingly beautiful collection entitled SCREWS. Nils writes:
“I am sitting in front of a sheet of paper. My right hand is bending over my left thumb. The first day I got out of my cast I could bend it by 15°. Now I am already at 50° and that makes me happy. Things are going uphill. As you can imagine, it is really bad news for a pianist when he gets diagnosed with a broken thumb. That day I was sitting in the emergency room, feeling rather dizzy while thinking of a zillion shows coming up and all the people involved around it. I realised in that moment how busy things have become. It is hard to turn down interesting projects and opportunities, since I surely love my work. It actually never felt like work. Playing piano and playing it for wonderful people is the greatest joy I can imagine. For a couple of days I felt like this could all be over. How pathetic, but hey – also feeling sorry for yourself has its place somewhere. All of a sudden I had so much time, an unexpected holiday. I cancelled most of my schedule and found myself being a little bored. Even though my doctor told me not to touch a piano for a while, I just couldn’t resist. I started playing a silent song with 5 fingers on my right and the remaining 4 on my left hand. I set up one microphone and recorded another tune every other night before falling asleep. The day I got rid of my cast I had recorded 9 little songs. They have helped me feel less annoyed about my accident and reminded me that I can only achieve something good, when I make the most of what I’ve got.”
You can stream the amazingness that is SCREWS in full below as well as download it for free (!!!). To enter the world of Nils Frahm be sure to visit NilsFrahm.com, and follow him on Facebook. For a full list of Nils’ tour dates you can CLICK HERE, and to browse Nils’ catalogue you can CLICK HERE. Pure amazingness. And if you love Nils as much as I do then you’ll probably love A Winged Victory For The Sullen in the link below as well. Their song “All Farewells Are Sudden” is perhaps one of the most gorgeous songs I have ever heard in my entire life.
SEE ALSO: A Winged Victory For The Sullen’s Gorgeous, Critically Acclaimed Album Is Out Now
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