One thing that is remarkable about Federico Fellini's films is his use of color frequency in black and white. In his films black isn’t simply the absence of color, it takes on a deep hue of its own. It stands in sharp contrast to the equally stark, brilliant whites. His films aren’t made up of simple shades of gray; the two-tones live in separate but equal spaces of their own. In the era of Blu-Ray we are seeing the same thing happening with the RGB color spectrum. We aren’t getting derivative variations on colors, instead we are treated to something approaching life itself. With these two poles gradually coming around to meet each other in the middle there is something to be said about the grainy VHS copies of recorded television shows we grew up watching. There is something wholly nostalgic about outdated technology, the colors feel a certain way, wrapping the image in a staticy, visual warmness. This is mainly due to the fact that we never saw true black in these recordings. The black that we saw contained so much “noise” (little white spots, non-uniformity of color) that all the colors were compressed within a limited spectrum that look very little like what we see today. Try looking for this on your taped Roseanne re-runs (it’s ok, we all had a crush on Becky).

Pantha du Prince has dedicated his latest album, by name at the least, to the randomness and ambiguity in those images that lend so much nostalgia to bygone technology. Black Noise takes on a limited tonal range, nothing fluctuating too much beyond the muted tones of microhouse’s 4-4 beat palate and a minimalist affinity for found/oddball percussion. But what Pantha du Prince does with this compressed access to sound is truly remarkable. Hendrick Weber doesn’t paint in the absolutist hues of black and white; more, he allows synth lines, organic percussion, unusual samples, and monolithic beats to crossover into each others auditory space, creating a blurred line between elements that make up an electronic composition. The result is eleven hypnotic tracks, each one a little masterpiece in its own right, that blend together to equal the inherent, random beauty of television static.

Black Noise, being the follow up to 2007’s universally lauded This Bliss, has some major expectations to live up to. In many ways it is a spiritual successor to everything that made This Bliss so incredible. The focus is on the thrilling headphone moments that make a walk home more than a walk home, those moments when the plodding beat and skittering percussion of all sorts of chimes, tubular bells, triangles, change dropping on the ground, samples of monster truck derbies, all circle around your ears and wrap you in a state of untouchable solitude. Black Noise has these moments in spades. The album opener “Lay in a Shimmer” is one of the most perfect album openers of all time. The track builds on itself, piling layer upon layer until the floating ambience and pastoral beauty becomes an intensely focused microhouse dance track.

The jury is still out on whether or not Weber intends for this to be a danceable album. Certainly, I have never been to a place cool enough to play this as part of a DJ mixtape. But, I’ve never been to Germany, so.... Pantha du Prince looks decidedly to the birthplace of techno as we know it, Detroit, to compose austere pieces that evoke as much home listening pleasure as they do a strong communal vibe. Although it falls under the umbrella of something as uniting as electronic music, Black Noise still feels isolationist, content to win over an audience with carefully composed subtleties and atmospherics, rather than trying to be a call to the dance floor. So, like I said, the jury is still out.

I can’t believe I have gone this far without mentioning one of the high selling points, the collaborations. Noah Lennox (of this band you might of heard of called Animal Collective) donates vocals to “Stick To My Side”. The immediately recognizable voice mixes eerily with the chilly rigidity of Weber’s carefully constructed arrangement. The second mouth-watering collaboration features Tyler Pope (Outhud, LCD Soundsystem, !!!), who guest stars on guitar on “The Splendour.” If you have studied Pope’s driving, rhythmic guitar work on those previous outings, you can guess the potential that lies in the mind-meld of these two incredible musicians. The result is atmospheric, chunky pieces of processed guitars that take on both a floating, ethereal quality and clanking, gamelan-sounding weirdness. Something not to be missed.

The end of the album contains a three song stretch that beats out anything else on the album. “Welt and Draht”, “Im Bann”, and “Es Schneit” are beautifully paced, spectral wonders of warm synth and uptempo beats. A characteristic that makes these three tracks stand out from the others is the inclusion of wordless, vocal cooing that floats in and out of the background like a chorus of ghosts. Acoustic guitar drones and decaying, delayed vocals enter and exit like a cut from Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops” on “Im Bann” and “Welt and Draht.” This is an unexpected turn, but works with the internal logic of the dance track.

Black Noise is Pantha du Prince’s first release on Rough Trade and could be one of those albums that has enough crossover potential, with choice guest spots, broad distribution, and major critical fawning, that it could spark new life in the microhouse, minimal techno genre and usher a widely dispersed music trend into the mainstream. We can only hope. There have been many before Pantha who have not received their due, but sometimes it only takes one album this amazing to open the door and let everyone in.

Track List:
1. Lay in a Shimmer
2. Abglanz
3. The Splendour
4. Stick To My Side
5. A Nomads Retreat
6. Sattelite Snyper
7. Behind The Stars
8. Bohemian Forest
9. Welt Am Draht
10. Im Bann
11. Es Schneit