DARKSIDE - Nothing - Matador Records
By the time Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington released their debut album as DARKSIDE in 2013, the duo had already cultivated a mystique—an alchemy of smoky improvisation, ephemeral live reconfigurations, and a distinct ability to render electronic music as something tactile, almost elemental. If Psychic felt like a transmission from another dimension, its follow-up, Spiral (2021), was more grounded, its hypnotic grooves gliding over well-worn terrain rather than carving out new topographies. Now, with Nothing, DARKSIDE recalibrates once more, delivering an album that is at once raw and introspective, guided by a newfound looseness in both structure and message.
The album’s genesis was rooted in a practice the duo dubbed the "nothing jam"—a mindful exercise in freeform playing, unburdened by premeditation. That openness extended to their personnel as well, with drummer Tlacael Esparza joining the fold. His presence subtly reshapes DARKSIDE’s sonic landscape, adding percussive textures that push Nothing into fresh rhythmic territory. On "American References," Esparza’s hand drums weave around legato guitar lines, while "Slau" flirts with dub, its skittering rhythms pulling Jaar’s murmured vocals through an undercurrent of delay-drenched tension.
Compared to its predecessors, Nothing feels more tactile—its sound palette an eclectic collision of krautrock riffs, Tropicalia rhythms, and distorted, almost punk-like vocal treatments. Watery synths curdle into metallic screeches; guitars lurch between meditative drones and wiry, angular bursts. Yet, for all its erratic energy, the album's quieter moments resonate just as deeply. "Hell Suite Pt. II" sees Jaar’s falsetto dissolve into Harrington’s gently wandering guitar, the entire composition unfolding like an afterimage—soft, transient, impossible to grasp.
Beneath Nothing’s improvisational spirit lies a simmering unease, a reflection of the trio’s engagement with an increasingly fractured world. As political failures compound—climate inaction, escalating violence in Palestine and Sudan—the band ruminates on what it means to do “nothing”. The album’s title becomes a cipher, suggesting both meditative stillness and apathetic disengagement. "S.N.C." and "American References" sketch figures caught in inertia, their idleness less a state of contentment than a refusal to contend with reality. Jaar toys with irony, his lyrics oscillating between bleak resignation and playful absurdity. On "S.N.C.," a repurposed line from an old DARKSIDE demo—"I did it for the rush / I did it for the time of my life"—lands with tongue-in-cheek bravado, its self-indulgence undercut by its own emptiness.
There are moments where Nothing’s social commentary feels oblique, its messaging lost in abstraction. Yet, when Jaar does engage directly, the results are striking. "Sin El Sol No Hay Nada" offers a moment of unfiltered grief, its Spanish lyrics mourning a world unraveling. Here, against a backdrop of ‘80s-tinged synths and reverberant guitar, the album sheds its layers of detachment, arriving at something raw and undeniable.
If Psychic was a slow-motion transmission from deep space, and Spiral a road trip through the cosmos, then Nothing is the sound of DARKSIDE drifting earthward, contending with the gravity of the present. It may not be as immediately transportive as their debut, nor as tightly wound as their sophomore effort, but Nothing stakes its claim in the in-between spaces—where entropy meets epiphany, and the void hums with possibility.
DARKSIDE’s Nothing is out now via Matador Records. Find it here.