“This nymph swam to gent.”
It’s always a rare and welcome surprise when Nicolas Jaar releases new music. It usually comes without massive amounts of pre-existing hype, entering from left field and finishing somewhere in the place your mind lands after lengths of stimulating coddling. Jaar’s latest is an 8 minute assemblage of subtle noise that slowly morphs into its own expressionistic monster – flirting with straightforward minimal, avant-garde horror-like film scores, and a looped vocal sample taking on a personality of its own. Synths enter and leave the track, hinting at some sort of melodic structure, before the song will repeatedly pull the rug from under your feet and you’ll just hear lightning for a few seconds.
Jaar really is a master at creating deliberate, psychological space out of a collage of sounds, inspirations and genres. As a music writer, it can be tempting to describe songs in comparison to others. This becomes impossible with most Jaar’s work, and one of the increasingly fascinating parts of his body of work, which can also feel highly organized and improvisational at the same time. As a listener, his music can feel like a chance to let your imagination take over. Check out “Fight” and let your mind wonder.
