Telas

Since Space Is Only Noise, released in 2011, Nicolas Jaar has been among the leaders of electro in the zone separating congenial music with regular rhythms from more randomized music, where textural and atonal exploration prevails over traditional structures. On February 7, the Chilean-American released a second album under his alias Against All Logic, and then came the pandemic. Confined like the majority of humans, the composer took advantage of his enforced solitude, and to call him prolific would be an understatement. Jaar first released Cenizas, which is in line with Space Is Only Noise and Sirens (2016), and now Telas. It features the use of percussion, strings, bass clarinet, filtered and transmuted human voice, digitized bells, analog synthesizers, harmonium, processing software, and more. All of which serves a most ethereal project, closer to electronic culture than to contemporary instrumental music. Without quite calling this a major work, it can once again be observed that Jaar excels in the creation of richly ornamented sound atmospheres, where new age, electroacoustics, krautrock and even early music find an astonishing common ground. The composer offers here four long, charged, ambitious, mesmerizing pieces, each within the quarter-range.