Pantha du Prince - Glühen 4
A phrase shall drop (like an anchor, or attire) - English / German
In a hastily dashed off e-mail exchange, to organise our meeting in Hamburg, the Pantha pins me down and purrs: either the two of us manage to phrase – in one sentence, set in stone – what this is all about – or we will write an entire book. In this case, what it’s all about translates to: what this is all about for him. A little later, I get to know him at our meeting, an early evening spent between ‘Smallville’, the record shop from the DIAL orbit, and the Pudel Club’s closed exhibition space, where Hendrik Weber tries to sound out the interior dynamics of slate; but also during a drive in the Volvo Hendrik uses to commute between his current residence, Paris, and Berlin; in my encounter with someone called Stella and discussing the band that shares the same name; via other band names that join the conversational mix (Egoexpress, Workshop) and, later on, at Brachmanns Galeron restaurant, the domain of a spaetzle specialist, musician and co-author of Pantha Du Prince’s Depeche Mode remix … So, slowly a person takes shape: in the references that surround him and in the actions and statements he reveals himself.
The one sentence – this was effectively our agreement. And when, some time later, I find myself tortured by the question of what this one poignant phrase might be, I cannot think of a single one.
It takes a return to our Brachmanns Galeron interview for this one statement to transpire; there it is, in Hendrik Weber’s explanation that “in a way, we did this for several years – you take a loop – let’s call it the Wolfgang Voigt technique – a string section loop, a guitar loop … and use it to assemble the music. By doing this, techno evolved its very own language, from this monotony of synchronised loops. And you always base the pertinent loop on a moment in your own past or in the history of music.”
That is the statement, that’s our sentence. Even if it is in the negative.
This phrase serves as an „anchorage point“ (Weber on the function of samples) for Pantha Du Prince’s second album, “This Bliss”, a beautiful record right at home not only with his label mate Lawrence (DIAL), but also with Daft Punk, Stardust and Whirlpool Productions, with Arthur Russell and the Pet Shop Boys. Not anchoring the music in a specific moment in time, not generating it from a sample, not abandoning it in a loop … also, not constructing the music, not designing a template, not generating an architecture … “Moving away from the sampling idea and towards instrumentation.” (Weber) To find out what that could mean, I tell him: I think the album sounds really rich.
„Rich? You really think so? I didn’t think it would sound rich at all …“ Does that bother you? „No, but I simply didn’t expect that reaction (laughs).“ Ah, okay. But you probably didn’t think it was DELICATE, brittle or something like that, either? „Actually, yes, I did. I thought it was a little too brittle.“ I see. „But I should also say …“ A quick glance at my notes reveals: I did jot down the word brittle, but as an antonym and counterclaim. Not as … „Not as what it is.“
So, for the second time this night, we find ourselves entangled in a negation. But there are also explanations. For example, the mastering specialists at Dubplates & Mastering helped with the richness of the sound. In another case – how do you know when a track is finished, when the production is finally over? – the explanation is another person: once she comes home, opens the door, enters the room, the track is finished.
Explanations of this kind might not clarify more than negations, but, like the latter, they reveal a lot. For one, they betray the brittleness and fragility of the space, the state of mind, that gave us “This Bliss”. Accordingly, Weber defines his particular anchorage point as an empty period in the 1990s. Back then, he had just moved from Kassel to Hamburg, but not quite arrived in his new hometown; it was the period before the foundation of Tobin Records and his stint as the bassist of local band Stella. “I remember this as a fairly strange time, an empty time of sorts.” In this vein, “This Bliss” throws up plenty of memories, but nothing concrete. Yet even this seems to surprise Weber.
„This Bliss“ is a house album. It is techno, track music. But considering his alienation from techno culture (he never quite arrived in this genre) – its musical blueprint (constructing architectures from looped samples), its excesses (for days on end, for days after), its work and publication flows (a constant stream of EP releases on different labels) – there should have been no second album. So why did he do it after all?
After almost exactly half the track, the twelve-minute piece „Walden 2“ undergoes a marked change, a far-reaching, yet smooth transformation. It almost sounds like a very clean mix.
Hendrik Weber: „To me, both parts are one and the same. To me there is no break; to me it simply belongs there.”
But it also denotes a transformation? „Yes, a transformation, that’s right.“ It marks a change. „Yes it heralds a change.“ I probably wouldn’t call it a break, it is something similar, but different. „It’s where I want to bring the Other to the fore and make it audible.” Thinking back to this particular track, it feels like most of the musical parameters were changed, affecting entire sounds, a different melody, even … „No, the sounds remain the same; the track rests on a scaffolding of continuous beats with very few changes. The instruments, too, stay more or less the same.” Oh, really? „All of the changes are in the music.“ Okay – so when you say in the music, you mean what you do with the actual instruments? „The harmonies, the rhythmic approach … okay, sure, sometimes and in certain places there are sounds that haven’t appeared in the track before. But it’s not like it marks a real change in my – well, there are no changes in the overall orchestra.” THE statement, the positive one, is this orchestra, the changing harmonies, this extremely elaborate, almost excessive musicality.
Where does it come from? It does not manifest out of thin air, without premise or prerequisite. It arises from this one point in time, from the moment when the orchestra stops playing or someone important enters the room; from the point where the orchestra, left to its own devices, would start to play on its own accord.
An essential element of Weber’s musical approach is the way he allows the instruments and their interplay to flow and proliferate. “I leave the music to evolve by itself and take a step back to observe what happens. It really is like a conversation; you never know exactly where you are or what the next topic might be …” Weber enjoys the notion of letting “machines communicate with themselves … and then reeling the resulting developmental process back into a coherent narrative.”
Techno, i.e. track music, aims to create a pleasant nothingness. Weber wants to create something from nothing. Something? It’s all about everything. It’s about that one sentence that says it all. A sentence? Towards the end of our conversation, Hendrik Weber drops a phrase like an anchor, or like apparel. “One word has to suffice to tell the whole story, the one that might be.”
Jochen Bonz