The lowly bell might not figure much in the history of minimal techno-- or, indeed, much contemporary music at all-- but it's a percussive instrument that holds much attraction for German producer Hendrik Weber, aka Pantha du Prince. Strip the bells out of "Lay in a Shimmer" from the high-benchmark Pantha release Black Noise and it simultaneously loses its twinkly elegance and errs a little too close to humdrum genre fare. Back in 2011 Weber appeared at the Øya Festival in Oslo where he took his obsession up a notch by collaborating with a collection of musicians on a series of bell-oriented tracks under the name Pantha du Prince and the Bell Laboratory. The name neatly tied into Weber's fascination with the instrument and electronic music's past; the original Bell Laboratories were where Max Mathews developed one of the first computer programs to play music back in the 1950s. At Øya the group played a piece titled Elements of Light, the name given to this studio recording of their efforts. There's a lightness to it that belies the literal heaviness at the center of the album-- an instrument named the bell carillon, made up of 50 bronze bells, bearing a combined weight of three tonnes.
This isn't such a great departure for Weber, instead coming across as the logical extension of an idea he's been chasing for a while. There are elements of classic minimalism worked in, as well as a healthy dose of the all-surface moves that were typical of Tortoise's transitionary work on the TNT album. On that record it felt like Tortoise were bridging between the airless electronics they leaned on during Millions Now Living Will Never Die and a space where you could sense them loosening up a little more. It's a feeling this album also taps into. The playing is incredibly tight, but there's a sense of adventure to the whole undertaking, with all the players locked into a common goal. It's an instrumental album with a tinge of narrative, particularly when they venture into mazy 10-minute-plus pieces like "Particle" and "Spectral Split". Ventures like this often end up feeling like a display of chops, a demonstration of proficiency, an exercise in technical prowess. Elements of Light is mostly the opposite; it feels like those involved were as invested in the transformative power of the music as they were in flexing their not inconsiderable talents.
"Particle" is a particularly impressive example of how versatile the bell can be as an instrument, especially when it juxtaposes ominous, church-like clangs with lighter tones that skip and twist across its surface. It's positively giddy at times, never quite ending up where you expect, bringing in familiar beats and swells of bass that anchor it in Weber's world, then constantly pulling rugs out from underneath the listener. To give away too much would spoil the surprises that are crucial to making this album work, but a small glimpse of its magic can be found in the turn into Tom Waits-style pots-and-pans percussion that is unexpectedly teased out during a section of "Particle". Moments like that, rendered here as a brief snatch of creative flash, but surely the basis for an entire track in lesser hands, are the points where this album really excels. Occasionally it meanders into cyclical drifting, particularly in shorter tracks like "Photon", where the ideas run a little dry. But even that just about works as a contemplative prelude to "Spectral Split", serving as a necessary foot-off-the-gas moment before something meatier.
It's in "Spectral Split" that Elements of Light flashes through all its tones, from washed out ambience to a momentum borrowed lightly from Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, to the interlinking of classical and electronic textures that Weber so clearly obsesses over. It also demonstrates his astute understanding of how important anticipation is in dance music, with almost half the 17-minute runtime devoted to a slow build that explodes into color when all its spaghetti-like parts are interwoven. That sense of release surfaces sporadically throughout the album and is fundamental to making it work, but it's always delivered with a great degree of control and patience. Sometimes a stiffness emerges in the playing and it feels too mechanical, like a computer trying to figure out the meaning of joy, but even those little moments tie in perfectly with the historic wink in the name of the Bell Laboratory. It's possible that their collected devotion to precision would loosen up more in a live setting, of which more plans are afoot. Here, there's a sense of picking at a strand of inspiration and seeing how it flows toward a form of endgame, albeit one that still prickles with possibility.
