Did you know there’s a map of all the street trees in New York? The one outside my apartment that’s been looking a bit sheepish lately is a Norway maple, I discovered. It’s not its seasonal nudity that’s lending it an awkward edge, but a crop of fresh, blond scars—round-shaped reminders of branches that once were. Along with many other trees in the area, the Norway maple recently received the chainsaw treatment because some of its limbs had become entangled with the electrical wires strung along the street, causing power outages. While my neighbors and I celebrated the end of our brief disconnection to the grid by logging back into our internet of choice, the trees along our street were probably engaged in their own kind of networking, deep beneath the concrete. Scientific research has shown that, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with fungi, a tree’s root system allows for the exchange of nutrients and distress signals (for example, during an insect attack) with other trees nearby, effectively rendering them a community.
All this is to say that thinking about the secret lives of trees seems bound to land a curious mind in fertile ground. German producer and composer Hendrik Weber, who is approaching two decades of releasing music as Pantha du Prince, would no doubt agree. His new album, Conference of Trees, is driven by a related, and self-directed, question: What does it sound like when trees communicate?
Weber answers his own question in a folkloric, rather than a scientific, way. Humans have looked to the tree as a source of music for millennia, mining culture from fallen trunks. Our ancestors carved resonant bodies from its lumber to create string instruments, and sliced into planks of wood to shake out all manner of sonic possibilities. In that tradition, Weber created his own set of wooden percussion instruments; I can almost smell the sweet and earthy sawdust in the stop-frame ambience of the album’s first few tracks. Throughout Conference of Trees, the forest’s dappled light is conjured by wood blocks and xylophones, while cello—played by French jazz musician Friedrich Paravicini—and monochord call to mind the rich, vibrating soil through which the roots must wind their way.
When Weber’s composition is led by a sense of density—multiple musical voices all intertwining to create a sense of vibrant dialogue—it is at its most engrossing. There is solace to be found in the gentle world-building of “Pius in Tacet,” and the pensive pace of “Lichtung,” which swells and evaporates like early morning mist. Even the echoey energy of “Roots Making Family” feels like a salve; in lesser hands, it could’ve come off chaotic, but instead it pulls focus, inviting the listener along on its search.
Where Conference of Trees falls down is when its electronic elements talk over its organic ones. The perky lead melody of “The Crown Territory” strays into twee territory, and in the context of countless ambient techno albums that have turned to nature for inspiration, “Supernova Space Time Drift” feels overly familiar and overdone. It might be sacrilege to die-hard Pantha du Prince fans, but I can’t help but wonder what the album would have sounded like if Weber hadn’t relied so heavily on his trademark bells.
That’s not to say there’s no place for bells under the canopy of Conference of Trees. When used subtly, as a shadow to the xylophone tones on “When We Talk,” they lift the whole mood. It’s compelling, too, to hear Weber take on a rambling Robert Wyatt-ish vocal here; a foreshadowing, perhaps, of his nearing elder statesman role. Where Conference of Trees ultimately takes me is back to the woods I walked through as a child, twigs snapping underfoot and sunlight filtering through a thousand shades of green. In turn, that makes me think of the Norway maple, planted in a sea of concrete to suck up the carbon dioxide we spit out, and leaves me wondering about the kin it’s making in the deep, damp soil.
