You might have heard some unavoidable Internet buzz about this new release. After dropping a smattering of genre-bending EPs in 2010, this experimental producer—barely old enough to drink—is releasing his debut. He’s got a keen ear for space and silence and his vocal-centric work suits headphones more than dance floors. No, I’m not talking about James Blake—this is Space Is Only Noise, the first full-length to come from 21-year-old Brown University undergrad Nicolas Jaar.
In an alternate reality, Jaar is getting the same amount of attention as London’s Blake, but this reality is one where the British capital is the center of electronic music and any passing reference to “dubstep” remains grade-A critic-bait. In this way, Jaar’s work is decidedly unfashionable. He draws on 1998’s downtempo, 2001’s minimalism, and even experiments with some non-dance styles, like the post-classical and found sound of the early 2000s.The skittering percussion on “Colomb” and “Etre” may bring Burial to mind, but the bass is too soft and the mood too ethereal to earn the stylish dubstep label.
But that’s why he’s so damn ed good. In an electronic scene that has spent five years asking itself what comes after dubstep, someone has stepped up with a fresh answer: what came before it? Gone is the grey London mist, the vague multicultural and urban references. They have been replaced by a distinctly turn-of-the-millennium dreaminess. Neither the blurred-out reggae of “I Got A” nor the Indian motifs in “Too Many Kids Finding Rain in the Dust” come off as “multicultural” here—they’re just parts of Jaar’s pensive mélange of styles.
That pensiveness is on full display during the album’s back half. After perhaps his most accessible (and least interesting) track, the oddly disco-influenced “Space Is Only Noise if You Can See,” he delivers some of the most fantastic quiet music since Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock or the delightful side B of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light—a hazy, flowing run that manages to be “ambient” without devolving into the new age schlock the term usually implies. It’s nice to be toeing this line once again—10 years feels like an eternity in the Internet age—but it’s even nicer to say that the most exciting electronic artist is here on American soil.
Voice’s Choices: “Colomb,” “Variations,” “Balance Her in Between Your Eyes”
