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“ I g ot a fa k e I . D w h e n I w a s yo u n g e r ,
so
I’d
le av e
the
p a r t y I w a s at a n d s n e a k i n t o j a z z b a r s . By t h e t i m e I wa s o u t o f h i g h s c h o o l , m y I . D s a id I w a s 2 5 .” - D a v e H a r r i n g t o n
SIT E d ark si de us a . c o m
set eyes and freshly shaven buzz cut, in contrast to Harrington’s higher-pitched tones and curly mop of strawberry blonde hair. And it’s Harrington’s New York upbringing and love of avant-garde jazz that collides and melds so effectively with Jaar’s prodigious take on 21st century electronic music in the form of DARKSIDE’s debut full-length, the consistently engrossing Psychic. Harrington explains: “I was living in New York, playing mostly jazz and experimental music – or whatever you can do with experimental music when you’re 15. I grew up taking jazz lessons. I never had a rock band in my garage or anything like that. I grew up taking lessons from these jazz guys in New York who are like sidemen with jazz legends. I was learning from these guys and having the opportunity to go to places like Tonic and the original Knitting Factory, because my teachers told me to come and see their gigs. It would be mind-blowingly weird and at like, 14 or 15, that had a huge impact. So that has carried on with me. I mean – going to see John Zorn. I got a fake I.D when I was younger, so I’d leave the party I was at and sneak into Tonic and go and see Steve Bernstein at midnight on a Friday. By the time I was out of high school, my I.D said I was 25. That was my fun when I was growing up. It’s in my pores.” These credentials fit snugly with Jaar’s multiinstrumentalist, organic attitude to recording – an approach which resulted in Crack’s album of 2011, Space Is Only Noise. One of the most startling electronic debuts of its era, it was all the more refreshing being, as it was, wonderfully at odds with the swathe of ten-a-penny house music producers which sat alongside it. Its natural samples, warped vocals, grainy noise and slow-paced, throbbing beats bore a loose relationship to the house music canon, but in other ways entirely eschewed it. His Clown & Sunset label followed, with a distinct identity married to this astounding debut, featuring artists and friends such as Acid Pauli and Valentin Stip. But like any true artist, the need for re-invention and the changing of musical lanes became paramount. Enter Other People, Jaar’s new label, whose scope is much broader than his previous imprint. “In the most simple sense, the sound I was really excited about five or six years ago that was a little slower and a little more moody and had vocals, and was inherently very electronic, but also organic – I got bored of that” reveals Jaar about his motivations for the sudden reset. “That sound ended up encapsulating what Clown & Sunset was. There were 60 songs on there and it was my first curatorial statement. I’m fine with it, but it’s over. I’m not excited by it any more. “I changed. Just as I got excited about making noise and rock ‘n’ roll with Dave, I stopped being excited by making funny piano house tunes. Most of the music I put out on Clown & Sunset, at least most of my stuff, is very old. Half of it was done before I was 20. This is what I was into a long time ago and it took a while for me to put it down and try a new thing. I’m very happy with Other People the label. I feel like it’s a blank slate and I’m not curatorially tied any more to any particular sound. This is also a sign of where I am now as a producer. I love going into DARKSIDE world and producing DARKSIDE stuff and I love being here [in his apartment] and making music for me, or producing another artist, or doing A&R. Before it was very much me in my studio making one type of specific ‘me’ music, so now it’s expanded.” One of the major characteristics giving Other People definition is the subscription service that sees members receive music every Sunday as part of their fee. It also provided the forum to acquire tickets for the much sought after Brooklyn show. In these days of free music at every turn, it’s testament to Jaar’s
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standing that his audience are prepared to spend money on his output. So with this constant supply of music, has there been a conscious decision to give Other People space for diversity? Nico explains: “I’m taking risks and going out of my way to make sure that happens. And it’s all cool because we still have more and more subscribers every month, so it’s like no matter what we throw at people, they remain interested. “Dave and I joked that one day I’m going to try and invent USB shoes or something, because I woke up and said “why don’t we give people some music every Sunday?” And then we were like, ‘we should probably charge people for that because it’s a lot of work.’ That’s all it is.” So what about take-up, has it been a success? “Yeah it’s been good. It’s satisfying to know there’s a big audience that I can fulfil.” Jaar laughs nervously. “I mean ‘fulfil’ in the business term; I’m not fulfilling them in any other way!” As our conversation moves on, the two noticeably settle. They’re happy to divulge that the name DARKSIDE bears no relation to either Star Wars, or The Dark Side Of The Moon, and confirm that their remix album of Random Access Memories under the name Daftside was every bit as spontaneous and light-hearted as the title suggested. “We did Get Lucky in like an hour: done. It was really cool and fun and hip-hop, but still us. The next day I was like ‘I can’t wait to do the whole album, I want to do another one.’ So when Random Access Memories came out I went straight to Dave and said ‘let’s keep on doing this’.” But despite his lofty stature and, as a result, more recognisable face, our conversation hits a stern moment when we question whether the nature of DARKSIDE could be defined as an offshoot of Jaar’s solo work. He’s emphatic in stressing the project’s parity. “When we talked the first time [Crack interviewed Jaar in 2011], we’d just started the first incarnation of the band performing my music. Two years later it’s no longer me writing the songs and performing them with three musicians I respect. It’s me and Dave making songs together and performing them to a level that is much higher than the level at which we’d be able to play my music. So now, when Dave takes his guitar and plays the actual riff he played in the recording, it’s live in a different way than if Dave was just grooving along to the things I’m doing. There’s a component there that’s very emotional – he’s tied to things he’s playing because he wrote them. So it’s not an offshoot. It’s the next step, and it’s just better.” Harrington is also keen to emphasise this separation: “On a musical level what Nico had done was curate a band of people to interpret his ideas. It was very different to being hired to play another songwriter’s songs in the sense of ‘it goes G, it goes C, it goes A’. It was never like that. Now we have something that is shared in a different way.” So with music that’s almost defined by its unpredictability, not least from Jaar’s seemingly spontaneous ability to find an effect, the most traditional sound running through the music of DARKSIDE is Harrington’s guitar. From the Mark Knopfleresque, musically conversational tones of Paper Trails, to the 80s riffage of Heart, among this most modern of acts therein lies guitar work to add a rich, almost retro modus-operandi to the DARKSIDE sound – one most closely associate with blues. “There is a gravitational pull towards the blues when
