For nearly a decade and a half, Chilean-American producer and composer Nicolas Jaar has been delighting music fans with his heady, cerebral form of electronica. Drawing on ambient, minimal techno and more, as well as singer-songwriter music and rock, Jaar has become one of the most distinctive producers of electronica in the 2010s and beyond. True to form, he has dropped another instalment of deeply immersive, idiosyncratic and beautiful electronic music that could only have been made by him. It comes in the form of »Piedras 1&2«, a set of two albums originally conceived as the soundtrack to a radio play, but which work exceptionally well on their own as a holistic listening experience.
The music is meant to represent the idea that memories, truth and identity exist in the liminal spaces of life – the intangible gaps and grey areas between things. Tracks like »Cangilón« combine ambient textures, found sounds and gentle melodies with Jaar’s resonant Spanish vocals. Throughout both albums, he skilfully sequences a sonic experience that takes the listener from moments of eerie calm to sparse yet propulsive beat-driven pieces like »Agua pa fantasmas«. The compositions exist in their own liminal spaces between light and shadow, between beats and ambient serenity, between noise and melody. Jaar is a true modern master of electronic composition, and this detailed and evocative double set is not to be missed by fans old and new.
Piedras 1 & 2
