ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 14TH 2011
1YRON’S TOP 52 RECORDS OF 2011 RANKING: #13


Not only was Space Is Only Noise the first truly great ‘electronic’ album of 2011, it transpired to be one of the most essential. Nicolas Jaar was born in New York but spent his pre-teen years in Santiago, Chile before moving back there for his studies. He debuted three years prior to Space’s release with his Student EP at the age of 17, adopting house and techno and has since drawn on his multicultural upbringing by incorporating Brazilian jazz and hip-hop into his music. Despite being a relative unknown, Jaar has worked on numerous EPs including a variety of remixes and 12” releases. Space Is Only Noise has established him firmly within the techno/house community through its remarkable level of insight and maturity that it’s almost impossible to imagine Jaar faltering on his next release. Alongside another astoundingly talented youngster who goes by the name of James Blake, Jaar is riding a new wave of house and techno, bolstered by men who have spent half their young lives tinkering around with the latest technology, the result of which is some pretty profound and forward-thinking stuff. As such, Blake and Jaar (in their respective dubstep and house/techno styled grooves) are exceeding in keeping these genres alive and more vital than ever before.


Space Is Only Noise is a record that owes much to a variety of styles with its structure and rigid arrangements, borrowing elements of dance, house, techno and hip-hop. This is definitely not a record that could be wholly defined by any one of those genres, however. Space feels like it’s constantly exploring the unknown, putting out its feelers into the dark to rummage around. It shares many similarities to a record it seemed unknowingly lumped with throughout 2011, that of Tim Hecker’s masterful Ravedeath, 1972 which also feels like a singular suite of music, with nothing to define its boundaries like the simple start and end of each song. In spite of its rigidity, Space feels fragile and oddly claustrophic which is uncanny given that a lot of these tracks are built around vacuums of extended silence. Jaar isn’t afraid of this space and many of his arrangements take time to establish themselves. When they emerge, it can often feel like a revelation. There’s a moment on Keep Me There where male and female giggles give way to a cacophony of horns which repeat in the mind way after the record has stopped. Then there’s the tango rhythms of Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust which recall Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand, or the jarring synths and tempo shifts of the beefy Problems With The Sun.


Space Is Only Noise If You Can See is the closest thing to a fully formed song on the whole album thanks to a dynamic pop melody and an established, low-slung rhythm with looped vocals drowned in reverb, but it soon folds in on itself during the second half as Jaar’s vocals become more distorted. Indeed, Jaar spends most of the record somewhere between the start and finish of his compositions. That is to say, toying with the idea of song structure and teasing the listener with his obviously bulging box of ideas by giving very little away. A snippet here, a half-percolated rhythm there; certain themes run through the record, from the sound of lightly falling rain, to distorted and consequently incoherent children’s voices and continual returns to its most apparent theme of kick-hand claps. They define songs such as Keep Me There, the subdued Sunday morning still of Parisian jazz on Colomb, and the woozy house of the Ray Charles-sampling I Got A Woman. As such, it transpires that Jaar enjoys transferring these hand claps into rhythms that can be both instrumental and vocal; the deep, snaking bass lines of Problems With The Sun and the title track are mere variations on these hand claps which he uses to build a framework around while clicks and beeps whir. The kooky vocal loop that opens Keep Me There protracts the dragging rhythm of Too Many Kids. It grounds the record in a firmly instrumental hip-hop setting. The pace is much too slow for traditional hip-hop, however, and Jaar operates on a much wider scale. The inclusion of piano on Être and its beautiful rise and fall on Sunflower provide a wonderful contrast to the stylised vocal harmonies of Colomb, the track between them.


The record takes a brief tumble with the inclusion of Balance Her Between Your Eyes which offers none of the unexpected left turns that the record’s middle section yields to keep you interested in spite of its sloth-pacing. Variations is a fantastic redeemer, the kind of song which will hook you on first listen and convince you that you heard it at some point in the none too distant past. It takes everything great about some of the record’s more plodding arrangements, captures a second of it, speeds it up and loops it back and forth on itself whilst throwing a staccato of vocal splices on top. Jaar has spent a lot of time and effort in condensing the wide array of styles on the record so as to cast a spell over every track and render it sweet, easy listening. The lines between electronic and acoustic feel constantly blurred and it’s often impossible to separate the two, neither feeling excessive or too self-involved as a result. There is plenty to love here and Space Is Only Noise is the kind of niche record that will go on to gather further acclaim and status as it matures. Jaar’s treatment of his material is presented in such a way that supplies as much as it denies. For every rhythm or melody (and they are copious) remain extended periods over which it may appear nothing much is happening at all. It’s these absences that substantiate the subtle tones and outlines of the narratives on Space Is Only Noise. So it can be said that space and noise go hand in hand with Jaar: not only does it require an ear for detail, but a sharp eye too.