Pantha Du Prince—the electro composer whose German passport says his name is Henrik Weber—hasn’t put out a record under his own name since 2010’s Black Noise. That album, which featured Panda Bear on single “Stick to My Side,” was a breakout effort for Weber, whose early work was a lodestar for influential German label Dial. He followed it up in 2013 with Elements of Light, which he recorded with The Bell Laboratory, and that collaborative spirit seems to have stuck with him for The Triad, his new record being released by Rough Trade on May 20.
“Black Noise was very much about me being alone in a small room in Berlin and composing,” Weber explains in a statement. “The Triad opens the structure to more human ways of interacting, not digitized ways of interacting… [It’s] about meeting up and jamming.”
Weber was joined in those meet-up sessions by Scott Mou (a.k.a. Mr. Queens) and The Bell Laboratory’s Bendik Kjeldsberg. Between sessions experimenting with modular synths in southwestern Germany’s Swabia studio, the three would forage for apples in a nearby forest. You can hear a bit of that forest sound on lead single “The Winter Hymn,” which opens with a flicker of synth that mimics weak light coming through the canopy. Check out the video for the song, which features Mr. Queens, below.
The Triad track list
“The Winter Hymn”
“You What? Euphoria!”
“Frau im Mond, Sterne Laufen”
“In An Open Space”
“Chasing Vapour Trails”
“Lichterschmaus”
“Dream Yourself Awake”
“Lions Love”
“Islands In The Sky”
“Wallflower for Pale Saints”
The Triad is out May 20 on Rough Trade.
