Nicolas Jaar

Sirens

OTHER PEOPLE. CD/DL/LP

Second solo outing from the Chilean-American electronic soundscaper.

A prolific sometime experimental DJ and producer, New York-based Nicolas Jaar combines the conjuring of arty electro-pop (with Darkside compadre Dave Harrington) and music for the dancefloor with soundtracks (Jacques Audiard’s 2015 crime drama Dheepan) and running his own Other People imprint. Sirens proffers another string to his bow, its nine skittering essays overlaying richly textured, genre-melding electronic sound worlds with liminal song ‘structures’ – like Dan Deacon put through a William Basinski ringer. Thus, Killing Time marries meditative, Keith Jarrett-like piano samples to Jarr’s heavily treated falsetto and, unexpectedly, a brief injection of steam-hammer rhythm, while The Governer punctuates a sweatbox smorgasbord of skronking sax and inchoate beats with a lipcurling, Alan Vega-like vocal, dystopian lyrics and a parade of, by turns, teeming and disintegrating electronic loops, ultimately wrestling lucidity from brave, if sometimes dense, studio invention.