Old Friends New Friends

Old Friends New Friends is a collection of works that, for the most part, never found their way on one of Nils’ records. The album gathers together 23 solo piano tracks recorded between 2009 and 2021, almost all hitherto unreleased but, for one reason or another, omitted from previous albums and projects. Neither quite a new LP nor exactly a compilation, it offers “an anatomy of all my ways of thinking musically and playing,” Nils says, adding with a smile, “Maybe I could say it’s an album I worked on for twelve years, and finally I have enough material?”

Old Friends New Friends was pieced together during the pandemic as Nils used the time to arrange his archives, conscious of the sheer number of recordings he’d accumulated. Having selected his favourites, he realised how, when he listened to them together, they offered “a different spectrum of freedom for me. I forgot that some tracks are ten 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.”

One can only guess how difficult it may initially have been to narrow down candidates for public consumption from the wealth of choices, because even selecting highlights from Old Friends New Friends is a challenge. Clearly, these are much more than outtakes, something Nils has no trouble explaining. “Often tracks that don’t make it onto an album are the ones with the most boldness and bravery.”

As for how he feels letting the music loose into the world finally, Nils simply chuckles. “It’s like if your kids finally move out when they’re 23, and you realise, ‘Shit, this could have happened years ago!’”