By Curt Busch
The 7th annual, five-day Decibel Festival kicked off last night in Seattle. Every September a handful of the biggest electronic names in the world infiltrate several clubs throughout the city. Electronic music isn’t necessarily my thing, so I didn’t recognize many of the near triple-digit performers, but a couple names that perked my ears were Los Angeles nu-beat king Flying Lotus, Detroit house legend Theo Parrish, and the mysterious minimal-techno maestro Pantha Du Prince, who I had the opportunity to witness last night at Neumo’s on Capitol Hill which the hosted the festival’s biggest kick-off show.
I don’t really know shit about techno and I always kind of assumed Europeans did that music better so I stuck to my hip-hop roots; hey, I usually prefer my electronic sounds at a chill, head-bobbing pace; c’mon I don’t dance, psshhhh. But now, there appears to be little difference in electronic genres with many producers using the same equipment, and creating weird hybrids; totally new shit, like Flying Lotus, who comes from a hip-hop background but hammers out high BPM grooves that sound like dance music. ANYWAY, I digress, FlyLo has little to do with this article, he’ll come up again later, but now on to the performance of Pantha Du Prince.
Again, I don’t know quite how this music is constructed, and I have no clue what Pantha was doing with his assortment of equipment. During his set-up I stared at it from balcony view with the wonder of a child – two Macbooks, twisty knobs, things that light up, wires going into wires, Jetsons-like drum machines – the thing I did recognize was a mic’d glass of water in which the black-cloaked German producer would ting and ring and wash in reverb. This was the beginning of his set and it was already the AM.
Even after blistering dance sets from UK’s Gold Panda, and Seattle’s Lusine – both from the Ghostly International label that sponsored the show – people were ready to get-the-fuck-down to the hooded headliner, who teased us with a mood-setting, glacial pace. After about twenty minutes of ring-a-ding-dings and shimmering sheets of perfectionist engineering, Pantha removed his hood, took up the hunched posture of Jonny Greenwood, sans guitar, and dropped a slightly off-kilter techno beat that grew into an ironically quiet groove.
Slowly he constructed icey layer upon icey layer until he’d suddenly lock into an amazing rhythm that kept evolving, levels rising, and soon enough, around the middle of the hour plus set, he kicked it into 3rd gear and shattered the audience with ear-busting loudness; sounds unfamiliar to humans, a kind of crystalline orchestra rising from alpine depths, a rave held in a frozen Berlin subway. The visual backdrop of a slow-motion avalanche contrasted the red-hot dance floor, which included a girl wildly flailing a hula hoop. After bowing to the crowd and applauding in true European post-soccer match style, Pantha crept over to the side of the stage, paused, and returned within seconds to finish with “Stick by My Side”, the lead single from his fantastic album Black Noize and his catchiest track thanks to a sticky hook from Panda Bear.
Again, I couldn’t name too many techno producers, but I seriously doubt many can match this dark German wizard in his craft. Flying Lotus is headlining the same club tonight, and I can’t imagine it being much better. But the two producers, who are equally progressive, rarely talented individuals couldn’t be further apart in their approach to the modern electronic sound. FlyLo is jazzy, hurried, and abrasive, with that glitch-y, frantic, Nintendo nostalgia he’s popularizing amongst gen-Y beat heads. Pantha on the other hand is classical, subtle, pitch-perfect, and mesmerizingly minimal, with slow-mounting intensity. However distinct the differences in these two giants, rest assured both producers will tear up any club, anywhere.
DOWNLOAD:
Pantha Du Prince – “Stick to My Side” f. Panda Bear
Pantha Du Prince – “Stick to My Side” f. Panda Bear (Four Tet Remix)
Pantha Du Prince – “Welt Am Draht” (Animal Collective remix)
