Out February 28th on Matador Records, Nothing is the third album from DARKSIDE: nine transmissions of negative space, telepathic seance, and spectral improvisation.
Today, you can watch the video for new song ‘S.N.C’ In March, the trio – Nicolás Jaar, Dave Harrington, and new member Tlacael Esparza – will begin their first North American tour in 11 years, including dates in Brooklyn, Seattle, and Toronto, as well as festival performances at Coachella and Big Ears.
On their first two reinventions, Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington entered the studio with a clutch of scattered ideas and loose melodic fragments to mold into what became the revered Psychic (2013) and Spiral (2021). But Nothing reflected a search for form borne out of spontaneous elliptical jams, acoustic riffing, and digital levitations. And in a fundamental shift from their first dozen years as a band, Jaar and Harrington recruited their longtime friend and collaborator, the drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza, to become a full-time member.
The outcome is magnetic and hieroglyphic. This album slips through the cracks of convention with serpentine guitars, extraterrestrial static, and cavernous drums. Haunted rhythms, distorted vocals, and uncanny beauty.
Understanding this evolution requires retelling the journey. Jaar and Harrington originally met at school in Providence during the early years of the last decade. While on tour in support of Jaar’s debut album, an off-day off-hand recording session in a Berlin hotel room caused their speakers to blow. The room filled with smoke and the song divined that day became their first single ‘A1.’
Shortly after shattering the 7-foot double-sided mirror that accompanied them on their 2014 tour, DARKSIDE announced what would become a six-year hiatus. In the interim, Jaar released a string of acclaimed solo albums under his own name and his dance-oriented Against All Logic alias. The Chilean artist left his adopted home base of New York for a more nomadic existence overseas. He scored film soundtracks, produced for FKA Twigs, and taught sound-editing and listening workshops throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.
Indicative of his roots in the New York avant-jazz scene, Harrington pursued a similarly left-hand path. An intuitive player somewhere between John McLaughlin and Jerry Garcia, the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist moved to the West Coast and immediately became a linchpin of the L.A underground. He’s become one of the most prolific and imaginative experimentalists of his generation, leading his own group, playing in various other ensembles, and co-founding America’s new last great rock band, Taper’s Choice (a jam outfit formed with members of Real Estate and Vampire Weekend).
The story resumes in Los Angeles. In the fall of 2022, DARKSIDE booked a series of shows to reintroduce themselves as a live entity for the first time in eight years.
To prep for their return, DARKSIDE rented a storefront in northeast Los Angeles. Esparza joined as a full-time member, fundamentally changing the sound and spirit of the band. Throughout the summer of ’22, the new trio built itself from scratch. At The Spiral House, they deciphered their new identity and vocabulary.
One central touchstone, the “Nothing Jam” emerged from these impromptu sessions. This concept initially came out of the constant search for mindfulness, but also through Harrington’s moments in the morning with his newborn daughter, where he found a deep beauty in just sitting with her on the floor doing nothing.
For Jaar, this concept of nothing became applicable to other aspects of life. “Nothing” is the reflexive answer when asked about what’s wrong, when there’s too much to even begin to express. In this framework, “nothing” means its mirror opposite. Or “nothing” can be a damning illustration of the lack of change in the world. The maddening inaction on climate change, the political hypocrisy, and the recurring cycles of violence against the people of Palestine, the Sudan, and elsewhere.
“Nothing” became a recurring motif on DARKSIDE’s subsequent European tour in the spring and summer of 2023. The sense of absence in the “Nothing Jam” could paradoxically become a generative space for creation. Recording sessions for the album began on a tour off-day, where the trio decamped to a studio in the south of France. Quickly, they locked into a whimsical, loose groove. The sessions in France were followed by another week in Los Angeles and another round in Paris.
Nothing is a record that reveals new wrinkles and vortices with every listen, a slowly bubbling, electro-acoustic symphony of small movements and subtle gestures. The record begins with ‘Slau,’ an atmospheric canvas of bass-heavy dub juxtaposed with slashing electro-clash vocals. Synthesizers pump like a softly beating heart; Jaar’s voice turns into a high-pitched gamma ray.
In just under seven minutes a song like ‘Are You Tired (Keep On Singing)’ spans almost as many decades. The wind whispers, Harrington’s guitar scythes minimally over Jaar’s falsetto, now slathered in echo and reverb. Then a middle suite sounds almost like a funkier Byrds circa ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo.’ It’s followed by a gentle breakdown where agile guitars crack through an ominous Druidic fog. Theoretically, none of this should make sense, but it’s somehow seamless.
The title of the finale, the sun-damaged and cosmically fuzzy ‘Sin El Sol No Hay Nada,’ harkens back to the original spirit of creation. The genesis of life itself. And in the music, there is the unstinting sense of excitement and open-endedness – where there are no answers, merely generosity of spirit and the desire to break free from the enclosed feedback loop. It’s truly something.
DARKSIDE – Nothing
February 28th Release Date
‘NOTHING’ TRACKLIST
- Slau
- S.N.C
- Are You Tired
- Graucha Max
- American References
- Heavy is Good For This
- Hell Suite (Part I)
- Hell Suite (Part II)
- Sin El Sol No Hay Nada
DARKSIDE
