Nicolas Jaar makes music to dream to. You can hear it in the rich, deep, complex and atmospheric span of his debut album Space Is Only Noise. You can feel it in the blend he put together for a mesmerising BBC Radio One Essential Mix, which stitched Jay-Z, Beyoncé and 'Nsync into the fabric of an ingenuous, emotional two-hour grand parade of high-grade ambience.
You can also sense it in the remixes he's knocked out of tracks by Shlohmo and Nina Simone or those throwaway one-off EPs in his back catalogue. Jaar makes organic, fullbodied soul music for daydreaming space cowboys and cowgirls.
When Jaar makes music, he thinks about people. “Often, what I do is based on people I have strong connections with, like my best friends. I’m not trying to do a specific something, just trying to be honest with what’s inside.
“Improvising has always been the most exciting way to get at something new and internal. The music I make tends to be going against the really fast, harsh techno sound, against the whole clubby aspect of it. It’s kind of also going against the drug aspect of it and the wasted aspect of it. It appeals more to emotions, it’s much slower.”
The music is also much sadder too. “My favorite music in the world is sad, and I think I always thought sad music had more of an effect. But I’m realising now that not everything has to be sad or dark to be special. That was the first phase of my creative thinking. Now I’m thinking that pain or melancholy can actually be something really beautiful and complex.”
Jaar started out making music about a decade ago when he was 14 years of age. The New York-born kid, who had lived in Santiago in Chile for a few years after his parents separated, decided to try his hand at electronic music. It could have been hip-hop – he was a big fan of Coolio's Gangsta b's Paradise – but he went for the abstract beats instead.
"I had heard an album by Ricardo Villalobos called Thé Au Harem D'Archimède and I thought it was really interesting. I was into minimal at the time, that kind of experimental minimal where you didn't put a big beat underneath, and that's how it started. I thought it had something you couldn't do with rock or hop-hop."
By the time Jaar got around to releasing records a few years later, he’d found a sound. That beautiful hinterland between so many different shapes and sounds, from jazz to electronica, was to be a happy hunting ground for Jaar, a musician whose tracks always sounded both of the moment and defiantly unfashionable.
“I think people are genuinely interested now in stuff that doesn’t sound like everything else that’s out there or has been out there,” he says. “People get excited by musicians who are making new types of music or who are coming up with brand-new ideas and genres. They’re prepared to go with these things more now than in the past, I think.”
He’s a great one for subtlety too, more than capable of excercising restraint rather than extrapolating and extending the most obvious groove or melody. “There are probably more people making slow music than fast music in the world. I’m making music in a tempo that is I guess experimental for dance music, but normal for any other music. Playing with time is interesting. It’s been done, but it’s so easy to not do with electronic music so you quickly see the limitations of electronics themselves because of those difficulties, which leads to some interesting places.”
Jaar took to the album format like a duck to water with Space Is Only Noise. "I often felt like I was doing things wrong putting out my music as EPs or tracks. It felt like they were just fragments of what I wanted to say. With an album, I could tell stories in full and let them play out properly. You could create this little world which had a language and a landscape."
The same also applies to Jaar’s adventures in the record business. He set up the Clown & Sunset label to release music by friends and people who are making “really interesting, complicated and pretty experimental music that wouldn’t be able to get heard otherwise”.
But Jaar isn't simply thinking about releasing MP3s or CDs. Clown & Sunset came up with its own way of releasing music in the shape of a small aluminium cube with two headphone sockets called the Prism. The first release using this technology was Don't Break My Love, a 12-track showcase of the label's wares featuring Jaar, Valentin Stip, Vignike, Nikita Quasim, Acid Pauli and others.
“I see Clown & Sunset more as arthouse than music,” says Jaar about his format adventures. “And I think it makes people realise that music has a value and that you can do things which are improvised and risky. I’m not trying to say ‘CDs suck’, I’m just saying that I don’t like them and maybe we could find something that’s more appropriate to the music. I take risks with my music all the time, but taking a risk with technology like this is more complicated, because it’s not what I do normally.”
All of the above – including running your own label and releasing some groundbreaking music – would be more than enough for most, but Jaar is only getting started. There will be more collaborations like Darkside, his project with guitarist Dave Harrington, more art and film projects with Clown & Sunset and probably more albums like Space Is Only Noise down the line.
The abiding aim with all of this work, Jaar says, is to get a reaction. “You want to change the way people see things in a positive way. My favorite art has changed me for the better. Music allows you to be in a state of mind where you’re just letting go.
“The real beauty in music is finding something sacred deep inside, but I feel like the older I grow, the more distractions there are. You have to be idealistic and crazy to make music and stay on that path.”
GOOD FOR BODY AND SOUL – FIVE MORE BALLINLOUGH ESSENTIALS
SOLANGE
The second member of the Knowles family to make an Irish appearance in the space of six weeks, Solange (right) is a name to be reckoned with for the year ahead. That mesmerising Losing You boom tune and positive depatches from a bunch of shows at the recent SXSW festival means there will be many takers for what Solange has to offer.
JAMES MURPHY
At this stage, James Murphy hardly needs an introduction. The leader of LCD Soundsystem and the main mover and shaker at the DFA label, Murphy has had a hand, act or part in more essential records than you've had dips in festival hot tubs. He's at Body & Soul for a DJ set so expect a life-affirming blend of vintage disco, classic grooves and new-school rub-a-dubs.
THE CONGOS
The sweetest sound in Ballinlough will come when The Congos burn it up with tracks from their classic 1977 album The Heart of the Congos. Produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry, it's one of reggae's timeless statements, an awesome coming together of the producer's audio know-how and heavenly harmonies from Congo men Cedric Myton and Roy Johnson. Those seeking premier league roots reggae should look no further.
THE BAHH BAND
The Irish-based collective have been winning audiences over with a hypnotic mix of Indian classical, trad, funk and post-rock, as evidenced on their Worlds Colliding. The band took their lutes, percussion, guitar, bass and drums to India this year for shows in Kolkata, Puri, Chennai and Pondicherry.
WONDERLUST
Every festival now comes
with a hefty helping of talks, discussions, performances and other experiences and Wonderlust provides Ballinlough with these sideshows. Highlights include WIFE, Jennifer Evans, The Casanova Wave (left) and Lisa O'Neill, talks curated by Le Cool and Totally Dublin (aka LCTD Soundsystem) and a pow-wow featuring Donal Dineen and Stevie G on Ireland's unsung musical heroes.
