He might just be the best jockey to ever touch a disc.
This may be a bold statement, but it surely is tenable. As everyone starts to jump on the Jaar bandwagon, it is now time, more than ever, to acknowledge his greatness.
Often snubbed by the regular lists and rankings of international DJs and (somehow) eclipsed by rising stars like Martin Garrix, the Chilo-American producer has time and time again proved he might just be from another planet.
His repertoire doesn’t seem to end, engulfing all kinds of genres and influences from classical to Latin, jazz to metal and so, so much more. His is another kind of greatness: no need to fill stadiums or convention centres. All he needs is a dark room, his setup and 45 minutes, and his whole audience falls under his spell.
From the lands of magical-realism comes the alien sound of another layer of music no one ever knew existed. Blurry, hazy, fruity and vaporous, Nico’s volatile and versatile mixes can’t be put in any kind of box. Even without the occasional lyrics, tales are told through plethoras of synthesizer tracks, beats and effects; and house music has never sounded so expressive.
When Brian Eno meets Carl Cox: Over the years, Jaar’s works evolved to bring new dimensions to electronic music. With his long-but-never-too-long peaceful passages on many of the songs on his later, more mature works, the producer transplanted ambient music to the otherwise often eruptive structure of EDM productions.
Նռան գույնը.
On last year’s Pomegranates, the producer expanded his ambient-electronic fusion to create a whole new world in which red is edible, and fruits sound like mermaids (no matter how beautifully nonsensical this might be, there is no better way to describe it). It earned him the pretension to an unofficial soundtrack for the 1969 Soviet masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates (Նռան գույնը).
His sophomore studio album, Sirens, features a Jaar sound that is stripped naked and mummified in a drape, a shroud, immunizing it from the wounds of time. As much 1946 as 3017, this last record since 2011’s Space is Only Noise is simply timeless. The Other People founder never really shows any boundary, or fear of exploring, and keeps pushing his reach farther and wider within the realm of the musical and auditive without nonetheless spreading himself thin. He grows and doesn’t deplete: he is pure genius.
Nicolas Jaar has touched everything, been everywhere. He’s done pop edits, EDM extended mixes, ambient compositions, and of course, experimental downtempo with Dave Harrington as Darkside; A project as mystical as his solo endeavours, dark yet shiny, and as always, simply brilliant.