Techno is often dismissed as clinical music, engineered for precision impact. But an irony of the genre—and one that Hendrik Weber, who records as Pantha du Prince, understands deeply—is that, though technical by definition, techno is most satisfying when you can feel the human inside the machine. This is the case with The Field’s analog loops and Ricardo Villalobos’ live samples; it’s what makes Holly Herndon’s cerebral experiments compelling and breathes life into Jon Hopkin’s chilliest compositions. Like those artists, the tension between organic and synthetic is at the core of Pantha du Prince’s work, from his minimal techno classics, Diamond Daze and This Bliss, to Black Noise, which saw Weber celebrating nature through field recordings and a collaboration with Panda Bear. You can hear it when Weber abandoned the trappings of the genre to experiment with a three-ton bell carillon, usually found in European cathedral towers, on Elements of Light, and it’s what makes The Triad, Pantha du Prince’s first solo record in six years, his most maximalist and emotional release to date.
Since the early '00s, Weber has evolved from monastic bedroom producer to an artist who prefers the company of friends, from Noah Lennox to The Bell Laboratory to Stephan Abry, with whom he created the duo Ursprung. In many ways, The Triad plays like the sum total of Pantha du Prince’s career thus far, uniting Weber's early minimalism with grandiose instrumentation and collaborative songwriting. Though *The Triad *is billed as a Pantha du Prince release, Weber has lots of help. Joining him are The Bell Laboratory's Bendik Kjeldsberg and Scott Mou, who performs as Queens. Together, the three musicians (and a handful of guests) act as the titular Triad, melding electronic compositions with all manner of analog synths (Synthi 100, ARP, CS-80), vocals, and live instrumentation.
As a result, The Triad sounds more like the work of a full band than one guy with a laptop, and it's better for it. Compositions unfurl slowly, starting as sketches before layers of instrumentation blanket one another in unpredictable ways. Weber makes expert use of the human voice throughout, treating his own and others' as additional sonic bricolage rather than the centerpiece of any given composition. Album opener “The Winter Hymn,” for example, begins with a beat, bells, and chimes, before vocals come to the forefront, thawing the track like morning sun on snow. On “Chasing Vapour Trails,” monotone vocals offer a playful counterpunch to the clamor of bells before the track's bouncy rhythm is joined by ragged guitar squalls for an effect reminiscent of Matthew Dear.
Speaking of bells and chimes, few producers have a better grasp of how to use them than Pantha du Prince. Even before his work using the bell carillon, Weber's palette relied heavily on metallic tones and percussive elements. On The Triad, these sounds blend fully into the DNA of the tracks—it's not a gimmick or a distraction, but the heart of the sound. The effect is simultaneously cooling (bells have a way of adding a chill to the production) and wholly organic. There's a tactile resonance to their sound that's inarguably physical, even when the sound is brittle or delicate, and when a track really goes for the dance floor (see: “You What? Euphoria!”) it hits all the harder.
Listening to a Pantha du Prince record is also a distinctly visual experience. His tracks have a way of enveloping the listener, invoking images of Arctic taigas, snow-capped mountains, rolling hills. Even Weber's track titles—“Islands in the Sky,” “In an Open Space”—ask to be taken as specifically visual experiences. Song titles even directly recall films: “Lions Love” is named after an Agnès Varda film, while “Frau im Mond, Sterne laufen” references a Fritz Lang dystopia. It's hard to say whether individual listeners will *see *the same things while listening to these tracks, but there is a distinctly synesthetic element to the music. The result is an album that creates its own world, one it feels like you could reach out and brush with your fingers.
