Pantha du Prince: This Bliss [Dial]

not going to see him in glasgow cos I didn't know he ws playing. how ws it?

― SKATAAAAAAAAAAA (cozwn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 19:57 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest

i texted you the day before the gig!

it was okay. guy with laptop etc.

handsome guy with a laptop, slightly better.

i like this new album! it doesn't have the iciness of the last one, per se, but is still pretty glassy...

that said, i've only listened to it on repeat while writing a massive term paper.

just... no. panda bear ruins this track for me. his vocals are way to prominent in the mix. they might have got away with it if they were more ambient or chopped up or unrecognisable. but i suppose, why get some flavour-of-the-week if you're not going to take advantage of it

some music really should stay instrumental

"the splendour" is nice, but feels like a this bliss outtake. just makes me want to go back to that.

not gonna touch this panda bear track until i absolutely have to...dude has one of the worst voices i've ever heard, the only way he could avoid fucking this up is by remaining silent.

am i being thick? is that track linked above or is everyone on this board a journo who has advance copies of everything?

i suppose vocals could have been really nice over the top of this, had they been decent vocals, but this is just completely the wrong vocal for the music. seriously, don't listen to it, lex pretend, his voice is inescapable

my mobile is borked right now, jed, sorry : /

I dunno, maybe Panda Bear's vocals are more prominent on the MP3, and it was just the stream quality that made them sound airier than they really are.

"Glassy" is a such a perfect word to use to describe Pantha's music, although I find it warm rather than icy, especially compared to most minimal of the time.

Agree "glassy" is more apt then my use of "iciness"

i REALLY LIKE 'Stick to My Side.' i'm reviewing this album for the next issue of XLR8R, think i'm most likely going to give it big ups.

and i don't really understand this hatred of panda bear's voice... i lost my AC fanboy status many moons ago (haven't consciously heard a track since 'Feels,' which might seem odd, but i just have no interest), but his voice can be rather charming, i think.

that said, 'Behind the Stars' is just okay, imho

(okay i love the way it ends, but the first half is a bit snoresville)

drip

when's the new LP out, again?

it's 'out' now if you have the google skillz.

It's pretty fucking good, too.

yeah it really is. wasn't too keen on the panda bear vocal and i like panda bear. so peeps whose mileage varies will be sure to hate it.

Can't say I enjoyed that song, but the rest of the record worked like a charm. After one listen, anyway...

i know i've said that i liked the Panda Bear track here.

but i also want to say that whenever i play that track for friend, they're really into it. they're not techno-heads, most of them, but have very good taste. so i'm wondering whether the difference is that those more 'invested' in the genre might not dig that track specifically, whereas those who might not be technofied might be really into it?

Yeah, many technofied people are most likely coming to with preconceived ideas about what it's supposed to or should sound like, idea that don't take kindly to Pandabearindiefuxxorwhatever. I'm pretty sure a lot of people are more offended by the idea of Panda Bear than his vocals themselves (case in point this thread). That said I don't actually like the vocals, but do think they'd have worked quite well if they were further buried in the mix, made more abstract/harmonic.

Woah strawman-building ahoy. Fwiw this sounds almost exactly how I expected it to sound.

I like this album, the Panda Bear vocals do get in the way a bit but they aren't terrible. It doesn't feel like the track should need vocals in the first place though.

i like this album except the panda bear song, but it doesn't really feel like it builds on this bliss in any way - it sort of reprises those sounds to satisfactory but slight-less-gorgeous effect.

I dunno, it's quite a lot darker than This Bliss.

Fwiw this sounds almost exactly how I expected it to sound.

because it's virtually indistinguishable from this bliss.

i really prefer it to this bliss and think it sounds more like diamond daze(?) but only listened to it through twice.

Fwiw this sounds almost exactly how I expected it to sound.

because it's virtually indistinguishable from this bliss.

― sir ilx-a-lot (cutty)

The cumulative effect is a bit darker than This Bliss, like Matt DC said, but no one track would be out of place on TB. A "departure", it ain't.

it doesn't have the iciness of the last one, per se, but is still pretty glassy...

The glass seems a bit cracked this time, if that makes sense.

My verdict is still out on the Panda Bear vocal track.

has this bliss showed up on any of these best-of-decade lists? because it oughta. (i imagine it'll place on the inevitable ilm poll.)

My #4.

Gorgeous but I can't find a way in, emotionally or intellectually. Sounds like stuff a decade or so ago, not the bleeding edge of nowsville.

Are you talking about This Bliss or the new one?

new one

This Bliss was 8th on FACT's decade list (http://www.factmag.com/2009/12/08/100-best-albums-of-the-decade/10/).

People who would vote for This Bliss as top 10 of the 00s: what makes it much much better than all of the emotional fragile sometimes dark microhouse released at the beginning of the decade?

I mean, I love the album, but in the same way that I love, oh, Total 7, say.

frankly I would love to hear loads more records in the same vein as This Bliss - any recs?

what makes it much much better than all of the emotional fragile sometimes dark microhouse released at the beginning of the decade?

If you have to ask...

(Which is another way of saying, "I don't know.")

My stab at it, Tim: It's all of a piece as much compositionally as sonically, so you get to really explore his sensibility, and Weber is the kind of artist for whom sensibility is all, rather than a brand identity's, bountiful though that brand identity may be. I find him hard to write about, which is clearly my limitation since what's so attractive is how sumptuous and immersive his music is; a lot of what I pick up on from that album is how completely he's showing off his facets, limited as they are in a strict sense. It's a narrower cohesion than a Total comp but it's also deeper, a portrait rather than a snapshot. Or, simpler: it really works as an album, maaaan.

(This Bliss isn't in my decade Top 10; it's 77th.)

Poke holes in this:

The postpunk/disco-rock/nu-electro axis : Sound of Silver :: Early Kompakt/microminimal : [i]This Bliss

Maybe?

I like that, even if I hesitate to fully endorse it.

My intention, I should note, is more relationship-to than culminating-in.

Yeah I guess all of that makes sense, and I do very much like the album.

I guess the thing that works even better in an "album, maaan" sense for me is mixes, and in my top 100 stuff like 'Hypercity' and 'Immer' and 'Friends' and 'Metawuffmischfelge', each of which attain that "portrait" feel while also being broader in their aims, would push out the space that would otherwise exist for single artist albums such as this. Though the vaguely similar single artist album I'd probably rep first is the MRI debut (which is rather underrated perhaps due to the existence both of 'Hypercity' and the more gregarious 'All That Glitters').

It's not merely the high poll placings though: lots of raves I've read about the album have implied some essential novelty to it, like he's doing things others haven't, whereas I'd say that really what he does is take something that's been done before quite a bit and then does it very intently. Nothing wrong with that, it's a noble aim, but I've wondered if people are hearing stuff than I'm missing.

This is what I said about dude at the time: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10273-this-bliss/

So you found it cold. And yet...

"hope itself becomes too much to hope for in a narrative defined by decay."

This is OTM, and why it's one of my favorite records.

("Disintegration Loops" is also in my top 10, fwiw.)

Friends is my '00s No. 1.

Yeah my issue here was less "why do people like this album so much" and more "gee, if this is number 8 then you better put 'Friends' (or equiv) at number 1!"

xp Mine's Apologies to the Queen Mary, but I should have put Friends higher, considering how often I have listened to it. It's been a go-to since I got it, more than either Immer.

This is why I was careful to give my list bullets and not numbers.

Oh yeah, I agree. Was being too shorthanded above. I think here we run into the semi-conscious (when we're lucky) inner-blocking that a lot of folks have re: "real album" and fake ones like comps and mixes. I don't think it's nearly as widespread in dance (-friendly) circles as outside it, but it occurs.

(xpost to Tim)

Probably true.

It's correct to say, I think, that Pantha Du Prince has really nailed this space as an artist-aesthetic, and I could imagine lots of people warming to it for that as much as anything else.

Esp. in the context of lots of artists in vaguely similar territory going sing-songy or eclectic or moving into a totally different style on their actual artist albums (see Superpitcher, Mathias Schaffhauser, Closer Musik).