In 2010 he released the critically acclaimed Black Noise, 70 minutes of deep, textured and tonal music that was essentially an ambient think piece that you could dance to. The genius of this release and its consuming sonic textures resulted in Weber becoming a highly sort after DJ, with him – that same year – playing the much lauded 3am set at Meredith.
In January this year Weber released Elements Of Light, a five track 44 minute collaboration with a 50 tonne carillon in Oslo and six players from various Scandinavian orchestras. A carillon is an instrument that consists of cast iron bells that was popular from the 16th century right up until the earlier 20th.
Weber discusses the decision to take on such a huge instrument and task that for many seemed like a sonic evolution for Pantha Du Prince. “I don’t think it was a natural next step at all, I think it was more a side step. More like taking the emergency exit or something. Like taking the back door of what should naturally happen next for me!” The softly spoken German is chatting to Beat via Skype ahead of his headline run of shows for Melbourne Music Week with The Bell Laboratory at The Melbourne Recital Centre.
“While feeling very natural and very normal, at the same time it felt like I was totally stepping outside of the logic, you know stepping outside of my usual production because I had to embrace a new process.”
Having not undertaken the lifetime of training to play the carillon, Weber had to – for the first time – work closely with other musicians. In the past he had worked with vocalists on his tracks like Panda Bear’s excellent contribution to the song Stick To My Side from Black Noise.
While explaining his motivation for collaborating on Elements Of Light Weber also reveals that he is not someone to rest on his laurels.
“I had to embrace the musicians, I had to embrace the idea of writing music that actually gets written and transferred into a notation system and so it can be reproduced by any musician! So there was this process that was completely new for me that I found in the beginning a little bit weird but also very challenging – I wanted a challenge, I wanted to do something that challenges me and that is also giving a certain new art form to people – a new way of thinking music.”
The Bell Laboratory was inspired by all of Europe’s carillons that Weber has come across over the years but as he explains there was one city that was the catalyst for this project.
“I would say I was inspired by many carillons to write the piece but the moment where it actually clicked that I needed to write something for carillon was in Oslo and this is also why all the musicians come from Oslo and why the whole project is part Norwegian and part German because it basically fell into place in Oslo.”
The Scandinavian players that make up the laboratory are Lars Petter Hagen, Heming Valebjørg, Martin Horntveth, Erland Dahlen, Vegar Sandholt and Håkon Stene with pretty much all of these members making the trip to Australia for Melbourne Music Week, however, as Weber explains the carillon will not be coming with them, “The carillon that we used for recording was a 64 bell carillon from Copenhagen. It’s a huge instrument and it would take months to ship it to Australia – its 3 tonnes.” However, don’t despair, the innovative German explains how they will improvise, “We will have the gong player playing the melody on drums.”
Most of the musicians who recorded on Elements Of Light are coming with Weber for the Melbourne Music Week performance.
As mentioned by Weber, the recording process was undertaken in Denmark with predominantly Norwegian musicians. However, there was no need for translators due to the superior education standard of Europeans. As Weber talks about the language of choice in the studio, it puts us predominantly single language Australians to shame.
“It was mostly in English. The Norwegians, like all Scandinavians, are fluently speaking in English and some of them even speak German.”
Weber now tackles the second communication barrier and that is, how does a self taught producer communicate with classically trained musicians in a musical sense, “When I talk about it, it always seems a little weird but it is in fact very natural to do this. I am not as good in harmonic systems and I am not as good in detecting which note a piece is in but I can feel it if it is wrong or right. I go with my intuition.”
To truly understand the technical side of Pantha Du Prince’s live performances it is important to understand the distinction between a Pantha Du Prince live show as opposed to a standard ‘live’ DJ set. Weber now treats us to a master class on how he makes his live performances a truly unique and mind expanding experience.
“My live acts contain separated channels into normally a 24 channel mixing board or a 60 channel mixing board. I use outboard gear that consists of effects that include analogue delay, analogue reverb, and a processing machine. Also it includes the Kaoss Pad drum machine and then I have the files running in Abbleton on my computer but they are all basically cut up into loops, into separate parts and separated channels in Abbleton so that I am free to improvise or reconnect everything to a preset state, so I can go very far away from the original track but every time go back to the track that you know from the album. So it’s a complex machine but once you know it it’s not so complex anymore. These days I am doubling with a technician that basically controls 14 channels that go into the main board.”
With the Bell Laboratory, the process had to change because as with any piece of music that has more than one player it is written to a schedule. For the producer of Weber’s depth it comes as no surprise that he manages to find creativity from within the structure. “With The Bell Laboratory I have to follow a certain grid with the musicians but the interesting thing with The Bell Laboratory is that I can sample from the musicians and the musicians are also intuitively free and doing what they want to do even though they need to stick with this grid,” states Weber.
It is reassuring to know that despite the technicality and skill that goes into Weber’s productions he still remains grounded in his field. A lesser man would be boasting a more human than human tenure after such accomplishments but Weber still believes he is just like the others.
“I don’t struggle to relate to other DJs and producers – I mean there are certain artists I struggle to relate to but I am still completely committed to DJing – Elements Of Light is simply a DJ telling a narration.”
BY DAN WATT
