Conference of Trees

German producer Hendrik Weber, aka Pantha du Prince, started the early 2000s making a hypnotic strain of minimal techno that was deeply informed by minimalism and ambient music. But it wasn’t until 2010’s *Black Noise*, which featured guests like vocalist Noah Lennox (Panda Bear, Animal Collective) and bassist Tyler Pope (LCD Soundsystem, !!!), that his signature sound—one which mixed the mechanical cadences of electronic music with more acoustic elements—really took shape. Ten years later, after making (and touring) a particularly high-minded, engrossing record with The Bell Laboratory and experimenting with conceptual art, Weber moves further away from the club on *Conference of Trees*, his most organic-sounding album to date. Envisioned as a hypothetical conversation between trees, the record is Weber’s embrace of his own place as an artist in the natural world. It’s an exploration of how wood—particularly instruments made from it—is the basis for so much of the music humans make, and how his electronic tools can interact with it. These songs are by and large ambient compositions: gorgeously textured assemblages of droning cello, echoing woodblock, and tinkling xylophone that play like one’s awakening to nature. Beats do begin to emerge around the midpoint of the album, but in Weber’s new world, they’re like the rhythmic twinkling of stars or falling droplets of rain, more likely to get you marveling at the sky than running for a dance floor.

With strings, xylophone, and homemade wooden percussion in addition to his usual synths and bells, the German musician ponders the secret life of trees.

Though known for a steady, minimal approach, German producer Hendrik Weber, aka Pantha du Prince, turned in his most full-bodied work with 2016's lush album The Triad.

A record that thrives on its biocentric themes, Pantha du Prince's Conference of Trees is one you won’t want to leave behind.

Even during his most maximal moments, Hendrik Weber (aka Pantha du Prince), sounds pensive. That's why Conference of Trees, the German music...

To step into a forest is to step into a majestic, timeless world teeming with life.