Records of the Week

PANTHA DU PRINCE’S OFFICIAL SITE
PANTHA DU PRINCE ON MYSPACE

Listening to “Black Noise,” the most recent release from Deutschland’s Hendrick Weber (aka Pantha du Prince), is akin to globetrotting with chef-impresario Anthony Bourdain, although certainly less vulgar.  While turning scattershot percussive elements into a comprehensible beat is by no means groundbreaking, Weber compliments the clacks and clangs with an array of multiculturally-infused elements – the end result sounds like a trance-ified tour of global kitchens.  “Abglanz” starts in this manner, with a number of rattles and chimes superseded by Caribbean beats and island pipes.  You can almost taste the cane sugar.  On “Welt am Draht,” one imagines pastoral Welsh highlands and nomadic sheepherders just leaving a breakfast campfire.  The album features some high-profile collaborations, including Panda Bear of Animal Collective, as well as Tyler Pope of LCD Soundsystem.  To project such vivid landscapes via microhouse is an astonishing feat.