Nicolas Jaar: I was a Teenage Villalobos

+ like lex said there's also a label comp out in a week or two that he has a few songs on

Tim Sweeney's just confirmed he is on the show tomorrow night so I obviously wasn't dreaming.

Woah - WOUH is incredible, some kind of Studio/techno hybrid I didn't know I needed to hear.

find a lot of his stuff a little meh but el bandido and time for us are both pretty great.

I dunno, it feels a bit soon for everyone to get carried away but it seems like a bandwagon has started rolling around this dude very quickly indeed. Then again, he's working withing a style where people are predisposed to throw around words like 'genius' very easily.

I like WUOH and Time For Us and what he does to Flashy Flashy, but I listened to the Marks & Angles EP and it just sounded dreary rather than hypnotic. I kinda feel like post-Villalobos there's almost no element or style that feels too weird to throw into this kind of framework, and it has a kind of dulling effect. Materials is pretty good though. We'll see.

really like a lot of what i've heard, particularly el bandido, but the vocals on Marks & Angles EP are so flaccid and lazy sounding bleh

the new album sounds a lot like dOP, but less house-y and more jazzy.

mostly agree with matt xp. time for us is the best thing he's done by a mile i think. i would really really like to hear him work with a good vocalist. think i read an interview where he said as much also. maybe he does on some of the forthcoming stuff? not that the slo-mo treated thing can't work too... like marks/angles isn't amazing overall, but it seems like he's starting to get the vocals to mesh with the production in interesting ways.

and will he further explore marksist politics in dance music?

I think he sounds like Matias Aguayo, even thought it was him at first. He has some better ideas than him from time to time but I'll agree with karl: he should abstain from vocal duties.

Just listened to his Live At The Bunker podcast (WLP087) in the gym - more propulsive than the RA one; doing lots of the same layering and building tricks but not quite as show-offily (or maybe just in a less developed way, since it's so much older)

Album dropping in February:

http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=12795

I am listening to it now (NB I have basically learned everything about him from this thread!), so far it's great and completely unconcerned by ~the dancefloor~ - there are a lot of moody pianos and a track that was like idk Barry Adamson crossed with microhouse or somesuch - I'm not really one for overstating the weather-appropriateness of music but 8am in a REALLY cold December is kind of where this is at I think

his beats in space is now up

completely unconcerned by ~the dancefloor~

I dunno, some people might consider this not necessarily a plus in house music.

oh clearly! NB a good chunk of it I would probly not describe as 'house music', also this is based on one listen on computer speakers lol

might have the chance to interview this fella soon. anyone got any questions for him?

you can stream his album here : http://maouris.co.uk/music-detail.php?c=cccd009-space-is-only-noise

can any jazz heads tell me what his edit "mini calcutta" is an edit of?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ_X9uTLHxo

Think it's dave Brubeck - Calcutta blues

Pro tip: the Ines compilation on his label is like a much superior version of his album, on the same micro-downbeat tip. Really beautiful stuff.

just sayin' thanks! x

O really? Love that comp but disappointed to hear the album's not as good xpost
No prob jed_!

another sample req (and this one has been driving me crazy) there's a kind of vocal whoop + crowd noise/talking in the background of "Time for Us" which i recognise. initially i thought it was from Marvin Gaye's "got to give it up" but no. anyone know the source of the "whoop!"?

http://soundcloud.com/nicolas-jaar/nicolas-jaar-time-for-us

O really? Love that comp but disappointed to hear the album's not as good xpost

The album's even more supine and feels flabbier, less consistently interesting sample choices too.

Anybody listen to the mix he did for Time Out New York? Quite possibly one of the sexiest mixes ever.

http://soundcloud.com/timeoutnewyork/nicolas-jaar-mix

(You guys know how to download "undownloadable" Soundcloud files, right?)

no

offliberty.com

view source, a do a find for

streamUrl":"http://media.soundcloud.com/stream/

then copy and paste everything inside the double quotes starting with http://media.soundcloud.com/stream/

in this case that's http://media.soundcloud.com/stream/iMHd65pdtNPy?stream_token=ktNzd

thanks. that mix is great!

think i'll go hear and *look at* him in glasgow at the end of this month.

ta Tracer!

absolutely <3 this. stunner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th33wxpla5s

Yes! That's my favourite Jaar moment i think. When the horns come in!

Jaar at his most ethnodelic reminds me a lot of Lhasa's 'The Living Road' album (I think he also included a Lhasa track on his resident advisor podcast).

i really liked his resident advisor podcast

v. elegant

...almost too elegant though? (in the case of his album at least). I appreciate what he's doing, but the LP... There's a fair bit going on, but not a lot to get your teeth into. It's almost an ambient record, with few beats going much higher than 110bpm. Think I need to give it a few more listens.

im into that

like recently i almost started a thread asking for more things like this w/o having this as an eg.

i feel like its one of those records where the beats jack as hard as you want them to

Ines comp is a better version of it though.

what is that?

Compilation of tracks released on Jaar's Clown & Sunset label.

Has some other artists on there as well as Jaar but it's all in that slightly glitchy percussive ethnodelic style.

xposts Yes I'm all for it too - certainly not a bad thing. It's almost becoming the norm for hotly-tipped dance acts releasing very restrained and non-dancey debut LPs at the moment. James Blake, Darkstar and now this. Aeroplane's album kind of tried (and failed) at doing an album that deviated from expectations. That said, I guess it was a bit more predictable with Jaar, but I'd have liked an album of El Bandido-style stuff.

A lot of the acts on Clown & Sunset are younger than Jaar himself.

The Ines album is great and despite it being a comp it feels very much of a piece. Jaar's tracks are great but they don't even stand out as being the best things on the record.

A lot of the acts on Clown & Sunset are younger than Jaar himself.

there are only three artists on the label iirc? but yes, both are younger than Jaar.

okay im into this

lol wtf is phillip sherburnes deal in this RA interview my god

what's a good representative track from this dude?

idk if its representative but Wouh is the one slaying me atm

This is fantastic. I'm absolutely baffled by the "meh" Pitchfork review that seems to think it isn't campy enough and also sounds too much like the first album?

Yes, that criticism seems way off. Also found it off to call Psychic a "normie pursuit" and a "dorm-room staple" .

It's def a different kind of beast. Personally prefer Psychic, but that's because it's v different.

Not sure where else to put this, but a couple years ago I went to MONA down in Hobart, Tasmania, one of the more amazing museum experiences I've ever had. Inside we saw an incredible multi-room installation exhibit that was profoundly memorable and impactful called The Divine Comedy. It was actually the work of Alfredo Jaar. Had no idea until recently. Just an incredibly talented family, and I dare say Alredo's got a better flair for the dramatic than Nico! If Australia ever opens their borders back up, it's worth it to check MONA out even just for this exhibit.

https://mona.net.au/stuff-to-do/the-divine-comedy

I’ve heard good things about that museum and was sad I couldn’t get to Hobart the one time (so far) that I visited Australia. But yeah Alfredo Jaar is pretty renowned artist and is in many collections around the world

Is it time for a Nico albums/eps poll?

(said while listening to A.A.L. 2012-2017, which is just a killer dance album and didn't even get much attention that I noticed)

Can I have a late pass . Loving the Pakistani vocalist Ali Sethi album Intiha from 2023 where he improvised ghazals over the electronic sounds of Nicolas Jaar.

Is it time for a Nico albums/eps poll?

Like a ballot poll? I feel he's still sort of in the middle of his prime and he's still releasing tunes though

what's good from the last few year? out of the loop.

s

Jaar reworked sounds from his 2020 album Telas for 2023's Initha album with Ali Sethi's vocals. Not sure what else he has recorded lately

The opening post in this thread is one of my favourites in all my many, many years of reading ILM. Love that potted bio

A good amount of the live-off-floor-in-studio-with-live-drummer-now-as-official-third-member takes on this Darkside album from last year are among my fave Nico productions I've heard: https://darkside.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-spiral-house

I guess it's 6 years old now, but he produced fka twig's 'Magdalena', which is a modern classic imo. I know lots of people were involved, but in an interview I heard she made it sound like the core team was her, Jaar, and the pianist who's on most tracks (Ethan P Flynn?).

I thought Arca had a big part producing that one too? Perhaps I'm confusing that with her earlier work

I think Arca just did some bits on the single (w/Future)