Piedras 1 / Piedras 2

Nicolas Jaar

Recently I’ve found that a lot of contemporary electronic releases have been a lot more oriented towards outright fun than in recent years, a really refreshing departure from the very self-serious nature of a lot of musicians in these spaces and the contemporary culture surrounding electronic music at large, especially in Australia. From Brat Summer, to Four Tet’s reinvention, to Floating Points’ recent album, and the slew of sillier Boiler Rooms, there’s a prevailing sense that “serious” musicians are making more music that is quite simply fun, while still being politically, socially, and artistically conscious of their broader surroundings.

Nicolas Jaar is in my opinion, the most formidable person to carry on this legacy of electronic composition, the prodigal son who can make you shake your ass and think about wavetables. He has gone further down the rabbit hole of ‘serious’ or ‘academic’ and ‘experimental’ music than many others ever would dream, but has also mastered the production of music that is unbelievably fun, accessible, and despite those attempts to appeal to a wider audience, nary an ounce of his creative and technical skill is ever watered down or spared. He’s dubbed albums that are better than entire dance/house record labels as “house music for people who don’t like house music”, ironically being treated as cult-classics within those very spaces; he’s made performances and albums that have tested my very faith in music for better AND worse; he’s created songs that are entirely silent for minutes at a time to act as a “timer” for other tasks. He’s an oddball, a genius, and until recently, a recluse.

Especially in recent years, Jaar’s exploits have moved towards the more alienating and glitchy realms of electroacoustic and experimental ambient music, with many projects in recent years (Telas is an example) almost completely doing away with the dance structures and latin bounce that carved through the chilling ambience of projects like Sirens and were so unfathomably intoxicating. He’s moved to installations and arhythmic live sets, created exceptional world-music collaborations, has 5 hour multimedia sets in geodesic domes, and played the chainsaw at Dark Mofo – now, I like all of this, but none of it has the trademark flavour of his more spritely Against All Logic works (which were releases of archival material), or his more lively and immersive albums like Sirens and Space is Only Noise, which were really formative projects in expanding my horizons in dance music.

I thought the era of dance producer Nicolas Jaar was over, and we were moving towards a more experimental and conceptual time. Intiha (the 2023 collaboration with world music pioneer Ali Sethi) raised my hopes somewhat with it’s lead single ‘Muddat’ - a beautiful funky number - but the rest of the project, despite still being excellent, did not match the upbeat lead single at all.

I was beginning to come to terms with experiencing my experimental dance offerings elsewhere, until I received this message.

I drop everything.  A single drop of sweat (or is it a tear?) rolls down my cheek.

“I can’t get my hopes up”

“I’ve been hurt before”

“What if it’s another ambient album”

“What if we never get another track as good as ‘No’?”

I pull up Apple Music and navigate to the poorly optimised New Releases for You section, and there I see it. Piedras 1, adorned with what looks like a constellation; an 8 track, 45 minute project. I can’t believe my eyes.

But wait, why is there a “1”? I thought this was just a standalone release? My trusted advisor said “album”, not “albums” – maybe it’s a new series he’s beginning?

I click through to his artist profile, and like George W Bush reading to Kindergarteners on September 11th 2001, I have a profound realisation.

There’s two.

The blood sings in my veins, I can’t truly believe my eyes let alone my ears as I begin to unfurl these new bodies of work.

First song – ‘Cangilón’. A rainy, delicate piece with some beautiful background synth melodies that swirl and contort. A great start before moving to the title track ‘Piedras’ – 3 and a half minutes in, I find myself lost in the Spanish lyrics, a shred of hope still within me.

Wait.

“Is that a fucking kick drum?!”

We are so back.

Good things come to those who wait, and the acolytes of Jaar have been blessed. Not one, but two new bodies of work, propelled by some of his most adventurous rhythms and beautiful percussion we’ve heard to date – a fucking treat.

I run inside to rave about the news to my girlfriend, who’s unwavering patience for my music rantings is worthy of an OA.

“Nicolas Jaar just released 2 albums. He’s back making dance music I can’t believe it”

                                                                                                “I have no clue who that is”

Shit, I need to put it in terms we’ll both understand.

“This is like the Tortured Poets Department release for people who only walk in their Salomons”

                                                                                                                        “OH SHIT”

“Oh shit” indeed. Nicolas has really pulled through here – both albums are exquisite as standalone projects, but together they provide the most comprehensive and expressive look into Jaar’s musical world to date. 

Despite the differences between the two, Piedras 1 & 2 are formatted in similar fashion. Each begin with long passages of ambience: a few spiralling key loops, some electrostatic interference, and a slow build. These ambient songs (or song, in the case of Piedras 1) then give way to some of the most interesting dance music I’ve ever heard.

By interesting, I mean music that feels both familiar and completely new – Jaar has always had a knack for creating sounds that I didn’t feel that anyone else could really replicate, and with the last few years of experimentation behind him he has improved as a sound designer beyond belief. He makes a 4x4 kick drum pattern more evocative than ever before, perturbing the beats incrementally back or forth, shifting things ever so slightly off before bringing them back in line.

‘Aquí’ is an early standout from 1 that I think demonstrates how well Jaar can take familiar structures or styles and breathe new life into them. The rhythm itself is very typical of a lot of Latin dance music, its slow chug and swing keeping you locked in a trance while crackly, digital synth leads transport the song completely elsewhere. The shards of interference, the snares that feel like lashes from a whip, the tinnitus-inducing concluding passage – all of these elements pieced together could be entirely unpleasant or overwhelming, but their arrangement sounds like baile funk in the Blade Runner universe, a genuinely unique take on a regional sound that is actively reaching the zeitgeist.

Mid-album highlight ‘Rio de las Tumbas’ is another favourite – Jaar’s crackly vocal processing and ever-increasing vocal skills lend the song the energy of an old ballad, delivered with emotion and a slew of really fun inflections to add character to his delivery. The instrumental and vocal would feel disparate in other hands, but this song carries the energy of a very tasteful remix of a forgotten classic. It makes for an unbelievably fun track that doesn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with complexity or density.

With both of these highlights of Piedras 1 in mind, we see that the first album leans more towards some of the traditional and historical influences of Jaar’s work under his own name. The songs are more vocal-oriented, with his exquisite production serving as a canvas over which to experiment. This ultimately results in a much lighter and, at times, brighter project than Piedras 2. If 1 was Nicolas Jaar’s solo work in the vein of Sirens, Piedras 2 is Jaar’s dance alias Against All Logic kicked up to 12 (it was already at 11).

Piedras 2 takes longer to get going – it presents seven consecutive songs solely devoted to building ambience, and with the first ‘dance’ song in mind (‘Heterodina’), it becomes clearly evident why. 2 *needs* to build tension for more songs, because the arsenal that Jaar hits us with at the back end of the album is the auditory equivalent of getting jumped by Boston Dynamics robots.

‘Heterodina’ starts similarly to the scene-building songs before it, but gives way to Jaar at his most nocturnal, hitting upon a sound that almost seems to interpolate between Burial and New York drill. The drums and skittering production rain down in swathes, setting up the album beautifully to explore the chaotic intensity the last 7 songs were solely devoted to building. From here, the rest of the album passes by in a blur, everything moves so quickly and glides with such grace that you almost forget the 20-minute preamble that got you there.

The closing trilogy ‘SSS1-SSS3’ mark an amazing completion of two strong bodies of work. Each track retains a writhing rhythm that runs into the next, allowing Jaar to chop and change individual components around a common core. It’s a really fitting analogy for Jaar’s career to date, where his central fixation of pushing the boundaries of sound has always brought him back to a core tenet of exploration, irrespective of which alias it falls under. The three songs can each be connected to one of his primary artistic endeavours: his solo Nicolas Jaar work (SSS1), his band Darkside (SSS2), and his dancefloor-focused Against All Logic alias (SSS3). They all serve related purposes, but there’s no mistaking one for another.

In an overarching sense, these albums are companions to one another not just in name and format, but in how they uplift the good qualities of one another. The gorgeous vocals of Piedras 1 shine a light on the use of negative space in Piedras 2, while the breakneck pace of the drums in 2 makes the sultry swing of 1 so much more captivating. Jaar is having his cake and eating it too, in a way, sacrificing expected elements to elicit a particular effect or reaction, only to then re-purpose them in other, captivating formats, often on the other album.

I think the ambient portion of each album (especially 2) serves a similar purpose yet yields greater results than on previous works. The euphoria and fun that eventually hits is only made richer by the patient, swelling passages that comes before it. Albums are a format that many dance music producers often struggle to execute in a way that doesn’t just feel like sequencing a DJ set, but Jaar makes piecing together not one but two complete albums feel rewarding and look effortless.

Either of these albums on their own would make for some of the best work of an artist’s career, but for them to be created in tandem and released together is a feat far more impressive. The convenient route would be to do one album of ‘slow’ songs and one of ‘fast’ songs, relying on some hacky duality to ensure the ‘double album’ is superficially justified. Yet both Piedras 1 and 2 feel borne of the same creative wellspring – their fundamental elements, reference points, and sonic palettes are shared. Instead, it’s the when, the why, and the how of their respective arrangements that differentiate one from the other. In other words, you’ll have to listen to truly find out.

Bravo.

93

Michael Katsavos

8 November 2024