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| Pitchfork |
 Ever since Ricardo Villalobos forged a 17-minute club anthem out of a looped piano riff and children chanting in Spanish (2007's "Enfants (Chants)"), minimal's narrative of rewriting the definition of club music has felt exhausted (more kindly: completed). The astonishingly young Nicolas Jaar has emerged in the shadow of that endpoint, and he has pursued a sound that cuts diagonally across modern house and techno's continuum of revivalist simplicity to outré sound design. This range can be heard from his straightforwardly lush disco edits to the generous use of silence and repetition on his forthcoming solo album, Space Is Only Noise.It's as if Jaar is simply adding new lines across post-minimal's completed coloring book, straining through sheer craft to change the tone and feel of the pictures. This restlessness gives his work the feel of being transitory, offering no statement of a fully formed aesthetic, only snapshots of resting places between one mode and the next. Somewhat perversely, the most coherent articulation of Jaar's approach is captured on a release not even in his name. Strictly speaking, Inès is a compilation of output on Jaar's experiment-slanted Clown & Sunset label, though as compilations go it's very single-minded: four of the 10 tracks here are from Jaar, and he collaborates with artists Soul Keita and Nikita Quasim on two others, while Keita and Quasim offer two solo tracks each. Inès is also single-minded in feel in spite of its sonic diversity, each track asking different versions of the same questions: what is the relationship between groove and non-groove, between chaos and order? Does the sun shine more brightly if it suddenly emerges from behind clouds? While stylistic contexts differ, from the softly popping Jan Jelinek downtempo of Quasim's "Freshman Year" with its woozy accelerations and decelerations, to the loping blues-disco stomp of Jaar's "Love You Gotta Lose Again" to the morose and mysterious instrumental hip-hop of Keita's "Dusties N 808s", everything here points to an underlying sensibility of absolute looseness finding itself pressed into the service of the beat....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| It's likely that Nicolas Jaar and his Clown and Sunset compatriots had most of Ines finished, if not all of it, before his name became such a hot commodity in the electronic music world. But it's nice, nonetheless, to hear how little has changed in the interim on the compilation. People are coming to Jaar; Jaar is hardly coming to them. Something tells me, though, that a delicate piano and guitar duet called "Tribute to My Mother" is exactly what fans might expect. They should. The young producer has made it clear that the dance floor is the least of his worries, even when he bothers to heed the advice of his Wolf + Lamb mentors and put a kick drum underneath something. Ines is way more concerned with atmosphere—open spaces, exotic touches, spliff smoking. It's the soundtrack to the ride home from the afterparty. Indeed, it's most party-ready moments (a relative term here) are probably its weakest. Jaar's "Love You Gotta Lose Again" is stiff, sample-driven hip-hop that doesn't get anywhere in its three-and-a-half minutes. "Her String," credited to the Clown N Sunset Collective, proves that more doesn't necessarily equal better. It's busier than anything here, losing the airy charm of the sparse surrounding songs by revealing what happens when the crew all decides to contribute. The secret to the success of Jaar—and his friends Soul Keita and Nikita Quasim—is their singular approach. Quasim's "Freshmen Year" would sound silly with a bassline; Keita's "Dusties N 808s" would sound silly without one. When they go solo, then, things get far more interesting. Quasim's "Can't Go to Cuba" sounds like a native dance from the country stripped bare. You can also hear shades of hip-hop, a key influence for the entire label, in Keita's "Don't Believe the Hype," which once again revels in the power of the 808. But, more than anything, Ines affirms that in the course of four releases, the artists here have staked out a signature sound. It's kind of like what you might imagine dOP would sound like if they were undergraduates at an Ivy League college. Or, maybe to save time, we should just call it Clown and Sunset....full text |
| Pulseradio |
| It is safe to say that anyone familiar with Nicolas Jaar only wishes that they were as accomplished as him at his age. At just nineteen, Jaar has already produced a number of acclaimed releases on Wolf + Lamb and Circus Company, toured the world with his engaging and unique live show, while also working towards a degree at Brown University. Oh, he’s managed to start his own label during all of this as well. Inaugurated in 2009, Clown & Sunset claims to be the attempt by the label’s artists, Jaar, Soul Keita, and Nikita Quasim to recreate the lost memories of their meeting on the US-Mexican border between San Diego and Tijuana in 2004. Whatever this means, it is clear that Jaar and his labelmates are kindred spirits. Clown & Sunset’s first full-length release features work from each artist, and interestingly is only available in digital format, or as a USB necklace. All three artists share a similar production style of very subdued, organic minimalist electronic music. As distinct as Jaar’s work usually is when you hear it, it is much harder to pick out blindly from the collection of songs here. Jaar contributes on six tracks here, two of which were featured on his recent Clown & Sunset/Double Standard joint release, the Love You Gotta Lose Again EP. Tribute to My Mother gurgles along through a collection of jabs from synths, piano, and brass. Dubliners starts off with a bizarre sample of ‘Mom’ being yelled and sung and doesn’t really evolve until about 4 and a half minutes in, where structured piano and handclaps bring the track some life. A kick enters to really give it a jolt and proves the song to be a lengthy but worthy listen. Love You Gotta Lose Again is Jaar’s highlight on this release, a hip-hop/soul flavored work that features a fine Latin guitar, howling vocal samples, and some thumping percussion....full text |
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