Nicolas Jaar

Review: Back in 2011, Nicolas Jaar joined forces with fellow Clown & Sunset contributor Dave Harrington for the Darkside EP, an impressive trio of untitled tracks that pitted the formers scratchy, near-paranoid production style against the latter's penchant for lo-fi indie-rock inspired fuzziness. Here, the duo dusts down the Darkside alias once more for a first collaborative album. Predictably, it's an impressive set, offering a collection of downtempo tracks that shuffle between crackly, out-there atmospherics ("Sitra", reminiscent of much of Jaar's Space is Only Noise album), echo-laden alt-rock experimentalism ("Heart") and heart-aching fragility (the James Blake-ish "Greek Light").

Review: Nicolas Jaar has been one of electronic music's most consistently hard to predict and innovative artists for a decade. The Chilean-American now offers up a full length on his own Other People label that he says is for inner battles. It is a work of masterful atmosphere that can be at times dense and gloomy, at others ethereal, and was written in isolation away from any form of stimulation-inducing drink and drugs. A constantly shifting sound means listeners are slipped in and out of reality as it plays out, making it tense, sombre and at times furious. This is yet another audacious record from the unrestrained mind of Nicolas Jaar.

Review: Having kept his silence for much of the past four years, Nicolas Jaar has finally broken cover to release not one but two new albums under his given name. Telas, which follows the highly personal and critically acclaimed Cenizas, was recorded largely in isolation and consists of four lengthy aural tracts strewn across four sides of wax. Almost entirely beat-free and ambient, it sees Jaar make use of all manner of custom-made instruments, squally jazz horns, unusual instrumentation (a bass clarinet features heavily on one cut) and his usual evocative electronics to create slowly-shifting epics that variously doff a cap to Reich/Riley/Glass style minimalism, Stockhausen-esque sound collage, the ambient works of Brian Eno and, most impressively, the 'Fourth World' sounds of Jon Hassell.

Review: Back in 2016, Jah Wobble offered up a two-disc trawl through the more dub-fired corners of his vast back catalogue, In Dub. While that set included dub tracks and self-made reworks that spanned the whole of his then 40-year career, this belated sequel concentrates on material made since 1990. As you'd expect given Wobble's track record, there's little straight-up dub reggae present, but rather a ton of hazy, delay-laden musical fusions that mix and match elements of ambient, electronica, post-punk, no-wave, traditional Indian music, trip-hop, psychedelia, jazz and even dense, tribal style drum tracks - all laden with the sometime Public Image Ltd member's trademark weighty bass. Throw in some never-before-heard mixes and previously vinyl-only versions, and you have another fine collection of heady, dub-wise fusions.

Review: The Chilean producer based in New York City Nicolas Jaar presents his new album entitled Sirens. This is his first solo album since 2011's Space Is Only Noise LP and released on his own Other People imprint. Jaar has been involved in various projects over the years, such as Darkside (with multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington), while last year he released Pomegranates, a collection of ambient tracks provided as an alternative soundtrack to the 1969 film The Colour of Pomegranates. The LP is six tracks that "flow seamlessly" between each other. According to a press release, the album is "Jaar's most topically cohesive and politically-minded record to date."