Driving long distances always gives way to discovering something interesting. While I listen to our Dutch business news radio (topics: business, economy, crypto) with in-depth interviews, analyses and background pieces when roaming the streets in my own country, I turn to playing music I never listened to before (from either Spotify or Soundcloud) when crossing the border and leaving my home country behind. Throughout time I bookmarked so many albums, tracks and set recordings, I probably could drive around the world many times before I'll finish listening to the complete list.
A few days ago I had another opportunity to discover new music when driving down to some small village close to the city of Basel (in Switzerland that is... uhm, the little village is in France actually, just across the Swiss border). For reasons unknown to me (am getting old? I forgot) I didn't have to think for long (really? I remember that part?). A memory of Fusion Festival flashed by. With that, Pantha Du Prince. The German artist was scheduled to play at the far end of this 5-day none-stop-music thingy somewhere in the northeastern part of Germany. I was supposed to check him out. Walking back to our camp from some other area, in the process of swapping friends (I'll explain a little further down below), Thor (the Thunder God) decided to pee without a toilet near. Not sure what he drank, but must have been a truckload full of beer or something. No end to it. Arriving at our camp, hand-delivered my friend back to her husband and little child, it was the overly liquid Thor releasing all he had in himself that made my other friend (the husband and father of the 2-year-old) not too excited to pretend as if all this water wasn't coming down and join me to Pantha Du Prince. To be honest, I was kinda done for the day as well, hence it wasn't too difficult to find shelter in my own little house (nothing more than a 2-minute-setup tent) and call it the day.
...Ah yea, I was gonna tell you about this friend swapping. They had their 2-year-old with them for the entire festival. Too little to be left alone, my friends took care of the little one in rotation. During those 5 days, I was chaperoning the parent in the field, while the other parent was at home. Interesting episodes, for sure. But not for this post. That's for another time, so stay tuned 😉
Anyways...
Pantha Du Prince it was. Not that album I love so much; The only self-produced album I have ever listened to from this artist. I decided to listen to his latest album. One that was released all the way back in ... yes: 2021 🙃 Steering the wheels made me not watch the details like the album title, track titles and whatnot. Simply pressing the play button and letting the sounds roll over me was the mode of operandi. At first, I wasn't hearing too much; Environment sounds too loud; I cranked up the volume. No beat, atmospheric tones, here and there some hammer-ish wood-ish sounds, wind chimes, triangles, some bass all the way at the back, almost hidden. Fortunately, I was in the mood of driving the same pace as the lorries so I could hear more of the subtleties of Hendrik Weber creations (for those who like to know, Hendrik is the artist's real name). Not only the first track is like this, but the whole album turned out to be like this. Nature sounds, singing bowls, and other lesser identifiable sounds added to the mix.
I was totally surprised, to say the least.
Am not sure if I shall be pleasantly surprised or not. I do very much like this kinda tranquil music. For sure I have to re-listen the album a few times, maybe I'll start to appreciate it more. I felt like the tracks contained too many almost resonating tones.
Wondering if Hendrik went on a mediation and/or yoga trip to India, or something like that. Maybe it was the Covid period with no bookings that caused him to explore other avenues in terms of music; Something I know quite a few other artists/producers from the electronic scene did. I wasn't planning to research more about this, but then I did anyways. Quickly I got the information this is the first album by Pantha Du Prince in this genre. I also noticed this guy produced quite a few other albums. For sure they are now added to my bookmark list. Maybe it'll be yet another time around the world to go through all of those 😆 When interested, check these short reviews about the album here and here.
Another interesting topic for further research is the 429 Hz-based tones and tracks. Is 429 Hz something similar to the well-known 432 Hz and 440 Hz? I wasn't able to find this with the help of the crypto-based PreSearch search engine. Do you happen to know, dear reader?
when not familiar with the features of 432 and 440 Hz-based sounds and music, this article is a great read providing an introduction to this phenomenon.
That one album I know so well. The album that I love so much. The album that gives me goosebumps still when playing. The album: "The Bliss" I introduce on our blockchain already 5 years ago in this post. What do you think of this one?
Using our own search engine Hivesearcher I discovered I blogged about mister Pantha more often. In this post I introduced a compilation album. Not so much his own work, but a collection of great tracks by a variety of artists. In this post I talk about a show Hendrik was planning in my own home town back in 2020 when Covid hit us (totally forgot about that one!). A performance I (apparently) wanted to go to badly, but was postponed, and later (as far as I remember now) cancelled.
Darn! I also missed the one at Fusion! Stupid me! :(
