Lav's Music Corner

 Review by Lavender: Darkside is the project of prolific singer and producer Nicolas Jaar alongside multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington. The project's inception actually dates back to the earliest days of Jaar's acclaimed career and the pair's debut album together was released in 2013. Following a long dormant period, the band returned in 2021 with a second album called Spiral , which I thought was every bit as good as their debut if not better. That's why I was excited to see the wait for a third release taking just half the time and went into Nothing  expecting the pair to keep all their momentum up.  Darkside has always been a strange and difficult to define project. They're probably best described as art rock but with a production and sometimes even compositional slant inspired by Jaar's more electronica-oriented projects. But even with that premise, Nothing is by FAR the pair's weirdest and most difficult to define album yet. The project jumps all ov...

Darkside  the collaboration between micro house producer Nicolas Jaar and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington. The project has been on hiatus since 2014, one year after their massively acclaimed debut Psychic . Late last year the duo publicly announced their upcoming sophomore collaboration which features racks dating all the way back to 2018.  Review By Lav: Within the increasingly complex and musically spectacular canon of Nicolas Jaar Darkside's Psychic plays a very important role, but always felt like it was a one off event. Given how great that record is and how well it's aged I was always excited by the idea of a Darkside follow-up but for some reason it felt as though it would never happen. That made the duo's return almost a mythical like moment for me, especially following up a ridiculously great portion of Jaar's career. In the past few years he has released two stellar house records under his Against All Logic's moniker, two very solid solo records high...

Nicolas Jaar is an experimental music producer who has had a very busy 2020 so far, dropping an EP and album under his Against All Logic house music moniker and a dark ambient solo album under his own name. Given how much I've enjoyed his music in the past and my positive reception to both his records this year I was excited for this album, but weary that some of his past solo records that feel less definitive have fallen short of his highlights.  Review By Lavender: Nicolas Jaar may already be the hardest working man in 2020, even if some of his material may have been floating around for years. With a cool album cover and four tracks each of which push well beyond 10 minutes I wasn't sure what to expect from Telas , but ultimately it adds up to one of the less effective and least essential pieces of the Nicolas Jaar discography so far.  Each of these tracks is long enough to be a completely isolated experience of their own so we will take them on one by one starting with t...

Nicolas Jaar is a Chilean-America musician who first emerged in 2011 with his experimental breakout electronic music record Space Is Only Noise . Since then he has released a second record under his own name, a collaborative project with Dave Harrington under the Darkside name, and two lo-fi house records under then Against All Logic name. Review By Lavender: Nicolas Jaar has been a name I've been keeping my eyes on for years. Despite the fact that I didn't love his second studio record Sirens  in 2016, I have enjoyed just about everything else he has done. From his excellent debut that narrowly missed my best albums of the decade list, to his cerebral gorgeous Darkside project, and his production work on the recent FKA Twigs album Magdalene . Not to mention an album that did make my albums of the decade list, Against All Logic's 2012-2017 , which got a follow-up earlier this year that I also loved and has been one of my favorite records of the year so far. Despite a...