After remixes for Depeche Mode or phantom/ghost and releases of "two of this summer's most wonderful hits" (according to a review written by bleed in de:bug magazine on "Lichten/Walden"), his new album is out now: here is "This Bliss" - a record that again acts both at the heart and at the boundaries of House and Techno music. It was produced here and elsewhere, on trips, while visiting friends, on the train, the airplane or when travelling between Hamburg, Berlin, New York and an old Parisian monastery. Expressed in terms of the currently popular discourse jargon: Pantha du Prince's second album after "Diamond Daze" (2004) can rightly be called "nomadic" as the final product reflects the mobile production situation. The bunker images in the booklet, taken from Paul Virilio's book " Bunker Archeology", may give a wrong impression. In fact, "This Bliss" has nothing at all to do with a bunker. As usual, invasions and emissions are welcome and appreciated. Pantha du Prince deliberately employs ambiguity to blur the lines between technology and communication, thus keeping the heart of "This Bliss" constantly in motion and producing either centrifugal or pulling forces according to the ambience and conditions. Moments of peace and tranquility are hard to find, even if the bass drum is not the boss anymore. "This Bliss" sounds like a trip to the end of the world (and the night); the sound bites either ramify in dreamy ornaments or disperse in glittering sound sparks (obviously, a spooky stalactite cave served as the perfect sound model for this sophisticated work). Also inspired by esoteric minimalist Wim Mertens, Pantha du Prince has managed to pull out all the stops when it comes to beauty. Ornament as a promise then? Well, sometimes, but somehow, these vagabonding fragments manage to catch the decisive moment and concentrate into precarious intensities. The sophisticated and minimal track "Moonstruck", a homage to Terry Riley, is definitely a club track. However, we must not forget that for the traveller "Departure" always means saying goodbye. Despite of the hit tunes and the clear destinations (Detroit, Moodymann, Minimal, Acid or the smooth and smashing track), the read thread that seems to hermetically hold "This Bliss" album together is the mood of rigid melancholy inherent in each track. "Walden II" and its displayed inwardness sounds like a lecture in negative dialectics for the club. What a promising yet at the same time doubting emphasis: a fragile and ambiguous flow is constantly threatened with disappearance. A track on "This Bliss" is programatically entitled "White out": instead of using fade-outs like on "Diamond Daze", cross-fading and overexposure techniques were used to create a feverish, flickering atmosphere. There is too much light on this white, flat land; everything becomes nothing, like in the absence of light. In this striking glariness, outlines become blurry, seem to dissolve, and indistinct become heaven and hell. "Black out" / "White out" - where is the difference? In this uberbrightness, each movement freezes into a speedy standstill. For Pantha du Prince, this freezing offers both, romantic as well as conceptual qualities: an inward hallucination develops in reverse order - at midday, and not at midnight. There is neither difference, nor any precise instructions: "Silent War" is how Hendrik Weber describes the zone where chaos and order, war and peace, silence and noise merge together. The track "Eisbaden" is more a movie soundtrack that accompanies this disorienting experience for body and mind. The way Weber uses unknown material blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, between self and others. "Saturn Strobe" is a cover version of a track from contemporary composer Robert Skempton. But due to the reversed phases, the strings do not remind of the original version anymore, but rather of a surreal invention. For "Steiner im Flug", a will-o'-the-wisping homage to Werner Herzog's movie on the bizarre ski jumper Steiner, Pantha du Prince used microscopic micro elements from the soundtrack by composer Popol Vuh. "Seeds of Sleep" tries to blur the limits between the sound concepts of Neu! and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Will all this knowledge on private mythologies really help find your way in the crystal worlds of Pantha du Prince? Knowledge does not always mean power and beauty cannot be summarized. But the moment cognition stops, everything else will start.