Send "Darkside " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Nicolas Jaar creates slow, strange, cloistered songs with keyboards and field recordings, breath, and drums. He makes synthesizers feel like natural elements, mingled with running waters, murmuring voices, and sighing winds. Jaar called his breakthrough record Space Is Only Noise, expanded on a key track to "Space Is Only Noise if You Can See". Titles are often red herrings, but this is the rare case where we might pause and come to understand something essential about Jaar's perspective. No one has found a good box for him yet, likely because he doesn't make a kind of music, but a way of music. (In purely diagnostic terms, our own Mike Powell's "downtempo minimalism" is the best shorthand I've read, though it wisely doesn't even venture to address the music's sense.) Jaar's new EP as Darkside, a collaboration with guitarist and bassist Dave Harrington, clarifies things further, but we've got to unpack a little before we come to it.Listen again: Space is only noise if you can see. The nouns and verbs are flashier, but the devil's in the adverbs and conjunctions. I kind of hate that rogue "only," that innocent-faced little "if." Does it mean that if you can see, you discover space is merely noise? Or that space becomes noise only upon being seen? And what the hell would either of those things mean? Jaar doesn't make it that easy for us. His assertive yet ambiguous phrasing has no solvable outcome, so it sticks in your mind-- or rather, your mind sticks up against it. And this may be the key to how Jaar's music works too. He applies a chilly, commanding logic to disassociated quantities until they fall into a restive equilibrium. He creates biospheres and then adds one extra, destabilizing element, or leaves out something crucial. His songs pose enigmatic questions disguised as bold assertions. Meaning leaks out of the substance to pool in the cracks, and things that shouldn't relate, do....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| On listening to Nicolas Jaar's new bluesy electronica project with his guitarist Dave Harrington, Darkside, it's rather too easy to forget that he's just 21. This is seriously ambitious music, with the emphasis on serious. There's no flim flam or shilly shallying. Just look at those song titles for starters—"A1," "A2," "A3." Jaar and Harrington save the creativity for the music itself, it seems. Released on Jaar's own Clown & Sunset imprint, all three tracks are hewn from the same nugget of precious metal. "A1" sounds like cosmic disco slowed down to 33rpm; Harrington's loping, arpeggiated guitar work is the setting over which is draped scurrying synths and modernist classical flourishes. To top it off, Jaar doubles up his vocals, overlaying an emotive baritone with a brittle falsetto. That same falsetto and moody fretwork appears again on "A2"; it has a Doors-y bluesiness and some of those minimalist Chilean tendencies, although it's a little too close in feel to the opener for comfort. The EP is rounded off by the dubby "A3," which moseys into town like some modern spaghetti western soundtrack, all grumbling, resonant guitar and distant echo....full text |
| Blackplastic |
| Nicolas Jaar still confuses the hell out of me. An artist influenced by Minimal IDM sounds like a snore rest on paper, but Jaar's hero Ricardo Villalobos is perhaps the only minimal producer who I can really see the artistry in. His music doesn't feel like it was only made for taking drugs to. Space is Only Noise has moments of brilliance and I love it. But earlier this year seeing Jaar play live at Fabric was an unnerving experience on a couple of levels. Jaar benefits from a passionate following, the likes of which I haven't seen for a while: Fabric was packed out on a mid-week night (I think it was Wednesday?) and no-one was in any doubt that this was a star we were witnessing. There was no mild curiosity from inquisitive bloggers here, instead the room filled with wall-to-wall fever. Where did this excitement come from? And my bigger question was why - on record Jaar sounded great, atmospheric, emotional, experimental. In the flesh, sadly, it most sounded like this was just music made for taking drugs to. Open air at Glastonbury was a different experience. There was more space, less dancing and the sky was lined with menacing storm clouds hanging threateningly overhead. It turned out to be much more fitting. ...full text |
Darkside lyrics
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