Available on: Clown and Sunset digital download / USB

Nicolas Jaar, now reaching a clear strut at 20 years old, has released a new compilation on his own imprint, Clown and Sunset.  Inès features productions by Jaar, a Chilean New Yorker, as well as 20 year old Nikita Quasim, of Russian/Afgan descent, and Soul Keita, a 17 year old Ethiopian national. It’s a real Captain Planet of melancholy groove architecture, and it could likely piss a lot of people off. It’s almost time for the inevitable large wave of Nicolas Jaar backlash, as he’s young, son of a respected artist, and gets to go around the world playing adult-oriented music… and has that “Villalobos thing” going on.

Clown and Sunset is some stranger, chuggier cousin-in-law to what’s going on in Berlin at Innervisions. Multicultural, polyrhythmic melodramatic grooves. World music without all the terrible associations that come with the territory. Self-described as “an outlet for these three artists to re-invent lost memories” sounds pretty accurate, or equally an outlet for them to re-lose invented memories. The whole label seems to cite Mulatu Astatke as its creative Godfather, and his presence is felt throughout. This album is pretty dense, and it’s impossible to read this text without considering that the average age of these three producers is basically 19. Think about what you were doing at 19. Probably not making heady music referencing Ethiopian jazz and an inarticulable awareness of the sadness and isolation of dance music, and getting respected for it.

4/4 120 BPM tech-house tracks, you can kind of imagine what they sound in a big room, even on your tiny laptop tweeters. I wish more DJs would have the balls to play tracks like ‘Her String’ on a muscled-up system to really feel the weight of it. You want to hear the detail of these sounds: traditional drums, guitars, stand up bass, 808s, a whole foley artist’s library of found sounds (a door closing, a soda fizzing to the brim, a catalog of domestic hits, claps, and scratches), the indomitable piano.

‘Dubliners’ is one of the few contemporary tracks that deserves the throwaway qualifier “epic”.  ‘Freshmen year’ (sic) is the air conditioner hiss in a Zoloft study hall. ‘Goin’ Bad’ finds Nico and Soul teaming up for a vocally driven eulogy for someone’s good intentions going six feet deep, relenting to one’s inevitable selfish self. By Part 1’s end, a glint of hope emerges in the clunky groove saloon jammer ‘Dusties N 808s’, defining a whole new possible genre: insecure swagger (iSwag).  When all three of them collaborate on ‘Her String’ it’s perhaps their most hopeful groove, the bass making light of some of the gravity surrounding it; a definite winner.

All of these productions are arranged so carefully but precariously that they can, and often do, completely unravel at any point, ramp down in tempo, and create space in the drum patterns that feels off-putting and, often, empty. Overall, it’s some pretty specific shit. Any sort of weird pitch bending or out of key sounds typically lead to certain labels: druggy, K’ed out, twisted, wonky and defected, but the only drug I catch wind of is precocious awareness. The whole Jaar aesthetic is founded on completely resolute contrariness; in interviews he has often described the heartbreaking nature of club culture, the need to escape to a place that is safe and distracting from whatever scars one has collected. This is not music fit for any or all clubs (or bedrooms, for that matter); it’s definitely an acquired taste. However, when played for the right set of troubled ears, this can be some of the most uniquely moving music that would want to play at 5am in some dark corner of the world.

Jonny Coleman