Album Review: Pantha du Prince – Black Noise

You can nearly always hazard a guess as to what music an artist has been listening to when hearing their album, but rarely can you do it upon just seeing the title. To name this album ‘Black Noise’, we can safely assume that Hendrik Weber’s musical diet consists of Mika, classical chillout compilations and a radio station that only plays birdsong. It’s hard to imagine another way that the man known as Pantha du Prince could have looked at himself in the mirror and said, “Pantha, this isn’t warm, pleasant, ultimately rather dull noise that you’ve created. Oh no, this is black noise. And that is what you should name the album.”

He was wrong of course, although we’ve no evidence that he said those things so we can’t blame him for that. But we can blame him for what is at best lack of progression from his second album, This Bliss and at worst, a few steps backwards. It’s clear within seconds of listening to this album that it draws from a similar sonic palette as the previous album, but the disappointment seeps in as the tracks go by and without getting anywhere substantially new. Chimes and shimmering noises abound, and much the same mental picture is painted as on This Bliss, only with weaker melodies and less interesting textures. Nothing on Black Noise touches the likes of ‘Asha’ or ‘Saturn Strobe’ for beauty, and the lack of momentum which wore down the sagging middle section of the previous album here infects practically the whole tracklist, leaving entire songs without a single memorable thing about them.

‘The Splendour’, the third track (and unusual choice for the next single) sets the pattern early on. Glacial percussion and keyboards flicker incessantly, and it’s all very nice and pleasant. But nothing here elaborates on the warm noises that we get in the first 30 seconds, instead leaving us with something lacking in texture variation.

To pin the failure of this album solely on a lack of invention is going too far, especially when ‘LayIn A Shimmer’, the first song, sees Weber sticking rigidly to type and succeeding in spite of this, achieving an glorious immersion particularly as the sub-bass sends the whole track underwater early on. The final three tracks, too, offer little new but manage to be pretty without being soporific. Plus, when he does add new elements, it isn’t always successful – particularly in the use of vocals. ‘Behind the Stars’, beefed up and trimmed down since its EP release, is a true highlight, with its introduction the closest the album gets to ‘black noise’, and its culmination containing the strongest melody of the album. But it very nearly gets derailed by some ham-fisted attempts at ‘scary’ vocals. Whereas that song manages to survive its clumsy vocals, the other vocal track doesn’t. ‘Stick by my Side’ has its momentum halted by a repetitive Panda Bear performance that seems at odds with a backing track that would have been fine without him repeating a million times that he’d like to try new things. At least on ‘Behind the Stars’ you can’t understand the lyrics.

This sounds like a panning, but none of what I’ve said means that Black Noise doesn’t represent a pleasant listening experience. But unfortunately, that’s about all it does represent, and its lack of real low points is achieved by rarely attempting to reach for any high ones. In the context of the previous album, the same evocations and emotions are being targeted, but here they are achieved less consistently and less impressively. If the title were representative of the work, there’s no knowing whether this would be a better album, although the two darker tracks on the album are frustratingly more interesting than the other more formulaic work. But it would have at least provided a counterpoint to Weber’s previous work. This album, unfortunately, rarely presents much of an argument for its existence when This Bliss is already out there.