Matador Vinilo y CD

Review: Back in 2014, Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington decided to draw a line under their Darkside project and move on. Spiral, their second album, is therefore something of a surprise, seemingly a product of two artists who decided to put last year's numerous pandemic lockdowns to good use. Musically, it's as heady as you'd expect, wrapping alternately wide-eyed and eyes-closed, soft-touch psychedelic rock grooves and art-rock sounds in the hissing, crackling, sonically detailed soundscapes that have become the hallmark of Jaar's ambient-leaning solo works. There are nods towards folktronica, spaced-out dub disco, acid jazz and late '60s Pink Floyd, but the overall feel is looser, hazier and more difficult to define. In other words, it's a quietly impressive concoction that rewards repeat listens.

Review: In recent years we've had some exceptional examples of what you might call "narco rock 'n' roll". The sort of records that sound excellent when you're high, but seem to lose some of their potency - or relevance - when you're listing through headphones at your desk in the middle of a working day. Darkside's latest is, unsurprisingly, very much of the 'baked goods' ilk, but there's a delightfully pop-friendly element at play here that means you can get a lot out of the experience without having to have your own induced experience.

Musically it's actually relatively conservative stuff, considering the artists involved. Nicolas Jaar is a bonafide electronic visionary who has been pushing boundaries for well over a decade, while Dave Harrington is one of the most forward thinking multi-instrumentalists you'll ever hear. Together, though, they create a space that's strange but also familiar, like rediscovering forgotten albums from the early-1970s psyche heyday.

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").