Remember 2010 when James Blake wasn’t a pop star, but a promising voice out of the R&S camp with just the clothes on his back and a wacky post-Untrue sample style (back when the way you pitched your vocal samples was enough to tag your name on the wall)? Then he covered Fiest’s “Limit To Your Love” and Mount Kimbie and Pariah didn’t seem so much like peers anymore. Say what you will about James Blake’s full-length debut, it’s hard to deny that his status as UK bass auteur and the fresh voice of a new generation of post-dubstep musicians (when that term was still a thing) is long behind him – short lived enough to forget it even existed.
The reason I bring all this up is because Nicolas Jaar has the potential to be the next name in cutting-edge, production nerd-slinging, can’t-quite-find-a-name-for-it electronic music to crossover. It’s definitely an unfair corner to put Jaar in (and perhaps a debate too tied to armchair indulgences), but I say “potential” for a reason. It was obvious what James Blake was gunning for with the perfectly calculated (and successful) one-two-three punch of “Limit To Your Love”-Klavierwerke–James Blake. Jaar, on the other hand, announced himself with one of the best debut long-players of 2011 early in the year, mixing all manner of buzz word genres (then transcending them), left-field pop sensibility, and identity-defining aesthetics and atmosphere into an exceedingly cohesive LP. He then let it speak for itself for a good nine months before releasing a free EP and returning again with this fifteen-minute collaboration with multi-instrumentaist Dave Harrington (El Topo, ARMS) as Darkside. And it’s Darkside that puts any doubt to rest regarding Jaar’s pop chops (especially with attention paid to vocals). Now it’s only a matter of whether he has any interest in chasing that potential.
I want to get off the indie forecasting, but I will say Darkside‘s brief length stifles it from being something truly impactful in terms of larger appeal. But let’s drop that line of thought. What is here is truly marvelous. Harrington brings sharpened bass grooves and chink-y muted guitar plucks that recall Manuel Gottsching’s E2-E4 to Jaar’s watery, glacial synthesizers. Everything is laid smooth behind a 4/4 kick that barely dings 80 bpms to create a sort of breathy slow-mo Italo disco. Gottsching pops up in multiple places. The spiraling ambient intro to “A1” with Jaar’s blossoming star-shine organ and Harrington’s tremolo picks sound like Ash Ra Tempel prepping for a lengthy flight. Despite Darkside’s Balearic underpinnings (Studio comes to mind) there does seem to be a bit of krautrock’s rhythmic psychedelia at play. At a certain point, though (right after that sub-bass kick bubbles up), it becomes clear Darkside are forging their own atmospheric territory.
Harrington’s detailed bass and guitar playing is the focal point here. Jaar is content to paint the walls of the steamy expanse embodied by the perspiring guitars with a few layers of icy synthesis. The playing itself is very good and not afraid to hang out front. Jaar, very noticeably inhabiting the producer role, rubs a fair amount of stuttering delay on everything and guitar melodies often get wrapped in each other, looped, or swathed into a massing whole, but there’ll usually be a plinking lick mixed out front as everything else hangs back. Some of Harrington’s bluesier hooks on “A2” even remind of Forest Swords, but Darkside is never not dancey. It’s refreshing to hear live instrumentation in an electronic context that isn’t afraid to be, well, live. Especially hearing Jaar excitably toy with it all.
Then there are the vocals. Jaar usually pairs his recognizable baritone and pinched tenor together for the sparse verses. The voices always seem to stop by for a momentary lull before the beat takes off again. Jaar is just as willing to mess with and loop the vocals along with everything else, creating some whirlwind intricacies as they synch with the plodding kick. I really hope this collaboration doesn’t end with the one EP. The collaborative dynamic is truly a joy to hear. It’s vital and active. It helps that there are some clearly defined roles, but Jaar remains just as busy behind the songs as Harrington does in them.
