Pantha Du Prince
Pantha Du Prince has taken minimal techno a step further. He claims: music slumbers in all matter; any sound, even silence, is already music. The mission, then, must be to render audible what is unheard and unheard of: black noise, a frequency that is inaudible to man. Black noise often presages natural disasters, earthquakes or floods; only some animals perceive this “calm before the storm.” His new album thru Rough Trade is based on field recordings and improvisations in the Swiss Alps; it balances precariously on the slippery threshold between art and nature, between techno and folklore. That lends it a certain spectral and intangible aspect. Nature and technology become indistinguishable, all authenticity evaporates. Not unlike Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3, adapted for television by Rainer Werner Fassbinder under the title Welt am Draht, it leaves the question of what is artificial, what is real, unanswered. Nature as a simulacrum. Although the music goes beyond the conventional techno format in a variety of ways, the dramaturgy always remains intelligible and physically captivating. I’ll have chips and a Fanta thanks. Now here’s Tom with the weather.
