If opposites attract, then science and art make the perfect couple. Together these two seemingly disparate practices inform each other more than people could imagine, and in ingenious, enterprising ways.
Take, for instance, the work of German electronica artist Pantha Du Prince, aka Hendrick Weber. His latest opus Black Noise delves into the science of sound, merging field recordings, frequency and superstition into a heady mix of experimental electronica.
‘Black Noise is a frequency,’ Du Prince explained on the concept behind his third studio album. ‘It’s a scientific term, it’s called ‘the silent noise’ and it’s frequencies that the human ear cannot ever detect, but some animals can catch the frequency, for example.
‘Also electric power, for example, is also called black noise, as it has a frequency that you are not able to detect, but certain machines are able to detect these frequencies and for me, it’s basically the principal of the hidden track in sound.’
It’s an esoteric idea really, that sound slumbers inside everything and as a result can be rendered audible, coaxed out of stone and wood… and even silence. But what adds to the intrigue of this idea is the scientific fact that black noise commonly precedes a natural disaster.
It should come as no surprise then that Du Prince recorded this album in the Swiss Alps at a site where, 200 years previously, a landslide had destroyed an entire village. The field recordings Weber captured were literally lifted from the rubble and ruin of the past.
‘The area was really a destroyed area, taken back over by nature after 200 years, but you could still see the mess of powers that were destroying this village and you could see the morbidity, also. It looked a little bit like a bomb’s exploded in some parts, like they really, really left a huge bomb and still it was kind of… atmospherically, very interesting.’
And it’s the atmosphere Du Prince has tried to capture.
‘We went outside and did special positioning of microphones in this place in the woods outside and then you already discover that you create a virtual world when you put on the headphones. You create a new room for your head and this was kind of really interesting, to discover that you can create virtual worlds already outside in your environment.
‘So this idea of space, of a room that is only created in your head but not existing in reality but you are actually in a place where it’s hyper-real, this was the moment where also the whole record kind of has its origin.
‘The main part of the album was made in a studio and was made in a technical environment; these recordings were just like the core, the little, little core that you have and the core is already everything in it and you just have to unveil, from the core, you have to unveil the story that is there.’
Add the vocal prowess of Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox and LCD Soundsystem’s Tyler Pope and Black Noise becomes a heady mix of techno, folktale and ambience. Eclectic and surreal, it’s an album that verges on the cusp of sonic house, having a slight hands-in-the-air twinge, eclipsed only by the beauty of the tracks it contains.
‘I don’t know if my tracks are really beautiful,’ Du Prince concluded. ‘I can’t really tell and I’m not trying to do beautiful things, I’m just trying to do truthful things. I’m trying to create something that has something true and I’m not so into only the concept of only the beautiful and the electronic. It’s probably just that what you create, people receive with a certain beauty.’
Black Noise is out now through Rough Trade/Remote Control.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
