Nicolás Jaar is a Chilean-American composer and recording artist based in New York. Among his notable works are the albums Space Is Only Noise, Pomegranates and Sirens. Since 2011, he has embarked on multiple explorative directions, performing a five-hour improvisational concert at MoMA PS1 and releasing a large volume of experimental recordings through his label, Other People, including works by Lydia Lunch, Pierre Bastien, John Wall and Lucretia Dalt. He scored Jacques Audiard's Dheepan and Pablo Larrain's 2020 film, Ema. Jaar is half of the band Darkside and has released two albums under the alias Against All Logic.
Biography
Jaar was born in New York to Chilean artist and architect Alfredo Jaar and Chilean mother Evelyne Meynard. "Jaar ascribes the melancholy in his music to the time when he moved at the age of 2 with his mother from New York to Chile." In 2007, he met Gadi Mizrahi and Zev Eisenberg who ran the legendary Marcy parties in Brooklyn, New York. After hearing his early works, Mizrahi suggested 17 year-old Jaar put a 4/4 kick drum underneath his largely experimental compositions. This was Jaar's first foray into dance music, documented in his first release on Mizrahi's label Wolf & Lamb, entitled The Student. "Back then, Mizrahi says, everything D.J.'s were playing was 128 beats per minute. The stuff he was doing was almost half that speed." Jaar spent four years in the NY underground dance scene, crafting rough, hip hop influenced house music. During this time, Jaar made two songs where he sang in his native Spanish. Jaar did not intend for them to come out as they were made as jokes to make his mother laugh and dance. He changed his mind in 2010, as he felt the songs were his way of answering what he deemed as exploitative sampling of Latin American culture by non-Latin DJs. He released his debut album, Space Is Only Noise, in January 2011 to critical acclaim and four stars from The Guardian. It was ranked #1 album of the year by Resident Advisor, Mixmag, and Crack Mag. Jaar toured the album for three years with guitarist Dave Harrington and keyboardist Will Epstein. Jaar was voted # 1 Live Act on Resident Advisor for the three years he toured the record. In 2012, he debuted a live concept called From Scratch, where, in front of a live audience, he sampled records he had bought that day. The first iteration happened in Queens, New York at MOMA PS1; it was a five-hour concert with collaboration from Will Epstein, videographer Ryan Staake, dancer Lizzie Feidelson and singer Sasha Spielberg. Jaar has also performed From Scratch in Boulder, Colorado, and Montréal, Quebec. On May 18, 2012 Nicolas Jaar made his BBC Radio 1Essential Mix debut, which was voted Radio 1's Essential Mix Of The Year of 2012. On October 4, 2013, the debut album from Darkside, Jaar's project with longtime collaborator Dave Harrington, was released to critical acclaim and a 9.0 score on Pitchfork. The band toured the record for the entirety of 2014. In February 2015, Jaar released an ambient and noise record entitled Pomegranates, which was described as sounding "like broken Middle Eastern instruments half-playing a modal melody amid bursts of hiss" Later that year, Jaar scored the soundtrack to Dheepan, a thriller by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard about a family of Sri Lankan refugees living in the suburbs of Paris. It was the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015. His second studio album, Sirens, was released in September 2016. Rolling Stone named it the #1 Electronic Album of the year. A deluxe version was released in December 2017, containing three new tracks interspersed throughout the album. At some stage in 2018 Jaar added a tilde over the letter a in his first name, in order to emphasise the last syllable. Nicolas became Nicolás. Jaar co-produced most of FKA Twigs's second studio album, Magdalene, released in October 2019. In 2020, Jaar released three albums; 2017-2019 in February, Cenizas in March, and Telas in July.
''Other People''
Jaar founded New York-based imprint Other People. It has published music from Lydia Lunch, John Wall, Pierre Bastien, Tomaga, DJ Slugo, William Basinski, VTGNIKE, Lucretia Dalt, Nikita Quasim, 12z, Sary Moussa and Terepa collective which consisted of Kouhei Matsunaga, Laurel Halo, Lucrecia Dalt, Rashad Becker, Charlotte Collin, Grégoire Simon and Julia Holter. Other People has also featured the visual & audio work of visual artists Africanus Okokon and Maziyar Pahlevan. In 2016, Other People launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with visual artists Jena Myung and Maziyar Pahlevan. In 2017, THE NETWORK became a book, published by PRINTED MATTER in NY.
