Emil Friis — Hollow Hands Ep
Following his 2025 album Moving Images, Danish composer and pianist Emil Friis returns with Hollow Hands — a four-track EP shaped by questions of humanity, free will, intimacy and connection. Written and recorded primarily in Friis’ Copenhagen studio during the autumn of 2025, the release expands upon the emotionally resonant world first introduced through Moving Images, while simultaneously moving somewhere more tactile, curious and inward-looking.
The EP draws direct inspiration from filmmaker Kevin Brooks’ short film for the piece ‘For Goodbyes’, part of Friis’ wider Moving Images visual project. In the film, Brooks reflects on faith, doubt and the fragility of human relationships through the line: “She was my savior. And that was the problem. What was I to her? An empty prayer. A hollow hand.” The phrase resonated with Friis, eventually becoming both the title and emotional foundation for this new collection of compositions.
“I’m drawn to things that are inherently human,” Friis explains. “Emotions that spring from us or are informed by us. What it means to have agency, or free will if you like. The urge to do something not because you have to, but because you can’t help yourself. The need to create, or the love you feel for people around you — to be a part of something bigger than just you alone.”
Throughout Hollow Hands, Friis reshapes the sonic language of the piano itself. Using a carefully assembled recording chain consisting of Extinct Audio ribbon microphones, a vintage U47 and additional FET microphones — alongside processing through Moog filters and a Wellspring reverb unit — the instrument takes on an almost physical quality: soft-edged yet immersive, intimate yet expansive. Field recordings captured in Italy during the summer of 2025 further deepen the atmosphere, introducing fleeting textures of memory, nostalgia and place.
While the wider world may feel increasingly consumed by noise, distraction and disconnection, Hollow Hands intentionally moves in the opposite direction. Rather than responding directly to contemporary chaos, Friis instead focuses on moments of closeness and emotional presence — small gestures and internal states that remain fundamentally human.
Opening track ‘Hands, Hollowed’ emerged from a chord progression that lingered in Friis’ mind throughout the summer of 2025. “It was important to me to try and create something that is the polar opposite of much of what goes on around us,” he says. “The loss of self-determination that many feel in this age of screens.” Beneath the composition’s drifting harmonies lies a partially obscured melody, suspended delicately within the haze of the Wellspring reverb.
‘Some Fine Afternoon’ is built around field recordings captured in southern Italy, which Friis describes as embodying “everything I love about this special place on our planet.” Listening back to the recordings while improvising at the piano, the composition unfolded naturally — compressing the warmth, stillness and nostalgia of a summer afternoon.
On ‘Hands, Remembered’, Friis revisits and reinterprets the emotional language of the opening piece. The composition strips back melodic structure almost entirely, allowing harmony and atmosphere to guide the work instead. Retaining traces of the tension present in ‘Hands, Hollow’, the piece simultaneously offers a sense of release and consolation.
Closing piece ‘As Sun I Meet You Now’ unfolds in two distinct movements. The first centres around a pulsating repeated piano note, over which shifting chord progressions gradually develop what Friis describes as “a story of determination and free will.” Midway through, the composition transforms through the introduction of Yamaha DX21 textures processed through Moog effects and a Wellspring reverb, before ultimately arriving at a powerful and emotionally expansive climax on piano.
Curious yet intimate, tactile yet quietly exploratory, Hollow Hands captures Emil Friis at his most nuanced and emotionally direct — creating music which resonates not through grand gestures, but through closeness, subtlety and human presence.
