Darkside has always operated at the edges of what rock, electronic music, and improvisation can mean together, and Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington have built one of the more genuinely uncategorizable partnerships in contemporary music over the past decade-plus. Bringing Tlacael Esparza into the fold as a full member adds a third gravitational pull to a sound that was already bending toward something harder to name. 'Nothing' is the third album from Darkside: nine transmissions of negative space, telepathic seance, and spectral improvisation.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 mold 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. Tracklist 1. SLAU 2. S.N.C. 3. Are You Tired? (Keep On Singing) 4. Graucha Max 5. Americans References 6. Heavy Is Good For This 7. Hell Suite (Part I) 8. Hell Suite (Part II) 9. Sin El Sol No Hay Nada UPC: 191401211529Label: Matador RecordsRelease Date: 2.28.25Format: CD
