Nonkeen is a German experimental trio consisting of pianist/composer Nils Frahm and his childhood friends Frederic Gmeiner and Sepp Singwald, who have been creating music together since they were in primary school. Their improvised recordings reflect on their youth and upbringing, and musically resemble a hazy mix of Krautrock, mellow electronic jazz, and ambient music. The trio first started recording together in the late '80s, when Berlin-based Singwald visited Frahm and Gmeiner (who grew up in Hamburg) with a tape recorder, and the three began corresponding by sending each other audio tapes filled with music and dialogue. Eventually, they formed a band, with Gmeiner and Frahm visiting Singwald in Berlin during summers, and the trio performed concerts at a fairground. Unfortunately, during a performance in 1997, two seats from a carousel broke off and crashed into the trio's instruments, and they decided to give up making music together. A decade later, when Gmeiner and Frahm had relocated to Berlin, the three friends reunited and decided to start collaborating again. Revisiting and reworking some of their childhood recordings, they improvised music in Singwald's basement studio, slowly piecing together recordings and working with percussionist Andrea Belfi, who overdubbed drums on several tracks. In 2015, the group finally decided that they had finished an album, and The Gamble appeared on RS in February of 2016. Following the trio's first public performances and debut European tour during the spring, Nonkeen released a second collection, Oddments of the Gamble. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi