Darkside - Nothing

February 2025 Record of the Month.

It fittingly started from scratch. On their first two reinventions, Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington entered the studio with a clutch of scattered ideas and loose melodic fragments to mould into what became the revered ‘Psychic’(2013) and ‘Spiral’ (2021). But ‘Nothing’ reflected a search for form borne out of spontaneous elliptical jams, acoustic riffing, and digital levitations. And in a fundamental shift from their first dozen years as a band, Jaar and Harrington recruited their longtime friend and collaborator, the drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza, to become a full-time member.

The outcome is magnetic and hieroglyphic. This album slips through the cracks of convention with serpentine guitars, extraterrestrial static, and cavernous drums. Haunted rhythms, distorted vocals, and uncanny beauty. No band but DARKSIDE could have made ‘Nothing,’ and in no moment but now.