More

More takes Frahm into the territory of electronic-orchestral fusion that his later work increasingly inhabits, but with a melodic generosity that keeps it rooted in the emotional register of his piano albums. The title performs a kind of self-description: the piece does accumulate, does ask for more from its materials, does refuse to settle into the minimal gesture when the expansive one is available. Synthesizer and string textures interweave with the piano, the boundaries between acoustic and electronic sound deliberately blurred. Production values are cinematic without being aggressive — there is space in the mix, room for silence to function structurally. The emotional landscape is aspirational, reaching toward something large without specifying its nature. Frahm trained in both classical piano technique and electronic production, and More represents perhaps his most complete integration of these two backgrounds — neither the stripped intimacy of Felt nor the raw live energy of Spaces, but a third thing that combines their virtues. It is music for the open spaces of large feeling, for the moments when ordinary life briefly touches something vast. Best heard while in motion — walking through a city at dusk, watching light change over water.