- An ambitious but uneven full-band approach results in some of the most beautiful Pantha Du Prince music yet.
- A lot has changed since Hendrik Weber first wowed techno heads and indie rock kids alike with his blend of microhouse and elegantly arranged bells. Now there's a whole cottage industry built around the kind of techno-infused neoclassical that felt so novel back in 2007, rendering what was once exciting into an entire, often boring, dance music sub-genre. For Weber's part, aside from his blockbuster live act, he's become restless, tinkering with his formula by adding maudlin pop touches or, on the most recent Pantha Du Prince LP, a more woodsy, earthen tone that didn't quite gel with the club-ready beats inhabiting the low-end. His latest album, Garden Gaia, feels like a comfortable retreat, embellishing the instrumentation while paring things down to a more digestible scale that's less about clubbing marathons and more about curling up with a cup of tea.
Garden Gaia follows an album of Krautrock-infused classical music from Weber under his given name. He sounds refreshed, relaxed, unbothered. The record's very first sound is those bells, the sound that has defined Pantha Du Prince since his very first records, paired with loose and limber live drums. Immediately the sound palette feels more organic and human, with a warmth missing from the addictive minimal beats of his classic albums (even his orchestral one). The move is in line with his recent priorities as an environmentalist. Conference Of Trees, for example, was inspired by the underground communication between trees, plants and fungi, while Garden Of Gaia focuses on how humans take part in one large ecosystem described in terms of "pouring" and "flowing."
To go with this new conceit, Weber invited friends to contribute a wide array of live instrumentation, which in his mind mirrored the kind of harmony and collaboration he sees in nature. The result is Weber's most varied album. While Garden Gaia can feel almost jarring in its sequencing, it's a welcome reprieve from the formula of hour-plus albums and extended grooves. The longest track here is just shy of six minutes.
The music is adventurous but calm, with a level of sincerity that might turn off some listeners. Closer "Golden Galactic" is orchestrated to the level of classic Disney film, while "Crystal Volcano" pairs an undercarriage of classic Pantha grooves with melodies worthy of Sigur Rós. It's like blasting a tech house track in the middle of some great, isolated forest.
Where Golden Gaia does emphasize rhythm, it feels more intentional: highlight "Blume" is based on a chunky but carefully massaged drum loop in tune with its surroundings. The rippling synth motif makes me think that this is Pantha Du Prince vying for the Bicep fandom. The same goes for "Heaven Is Where You Are," which starts with the sounds of kick drums banging away in a nightclub and opens up into a twee vocal track with hints of turn-of-the-millennium crossover acts like The Notwist.
As we've come to expect from Weber, Garden Gaia is full of ear-catching details, like how Helena Tusvik Rosenlund's vocals echo and bounce off Weber's, a symbiotic sound that embodies the LP's core idea of naturalistic movement and coexistence. And it's hard to get sick of the sound of those classic bells, like on "Liquid Lights," whose jaunty beat feels like a gift for old-school fans. No matter how many of his records you've heard, the way the bell notes seem to slip and slide into each other never fails to astound. Weber has this market cornered, and no one can do it like him.
Still, Garden Gaia is remarkable for how far outside the lines it colors. Even the album cover looks more like a Yes record than modern classical LP. It's both humble and ambitious, wonderfully arranged in some places and slightly clumsy in others (the Popol Vuh-isms of "Start A New Life" kill the album's momentum just three tracks in, and I've yet to be convinced by Weber's humdrum vocals). But for an artist who has always been earnest and upfront about big melodies, Garden Gaia feels like the logical next step, freeing him from his techno past. Where, on tracks like "Bohemian Forest" or "Saturn Strobe," the emotions slunk around corners, revealing themselves briefly in the gleam of Weber's bells, with Garden Gaia everything is out in the open, a multi-faceted, collaborative celebration of life as lovably over-the-top and beautiful as that sounds.
Tracklist01. Open Day
02. Crystal Volcano
03. Start A New Life
04. Blume (Bendik HK Edit)
05. Mother Drum
06. Heaven Is Where You Are (Bendik HK Edit)
07. Liquid Lights
08. Alles Fühlt
09. Golden Galactic