Artist: @nicolas-jaar
LP Title: Space Is Only Noise (Ten Year Edition)
Cat#: CCS116
Label: Circus Company

It has been 10 years since Nicolas Jaar released his celebrated debut album, Space Is Only Noise here on Circus Company. With countless accolades, forays, and dips into other waters both preceding its arrival one decade ago and since with many musical ventures this LP still stands as not only a unique and verified-classic release in the artist’s own expansive catalog as well as ours, but also amongst the general pantheon of electronic music of the 21st Century on the whole. 

What better way to celebrate this milestone than with an immaculate must-have re-release package, with the music now spread out over double discs and cut at 45rpm on crystal clear vinyl and 180 gram black vinyl to let the glacial top-end soar as originally intended, and the air of the general proceedings expand, once again, into the ears and consciousness of electronic music lovers the world over. Along with this technical upgrade recut, the distinct artwork has also received a facelift fit for the occasion, and will now be found adorning a full gatefold cover, inked lovingly in reverse on inside-out heavyweight paper including printed inner sleeves for a total collector’s gem front-to-back.

While Nicolas Jaar’s own recent online musings of the origin of the album title and lead track has us imagining playful plexiglass-letterings and a fresh sense of abstract calm before soon-to-be career storms, the music itself feels to have not aged a day past its prime of creation. From the unanimous crowdpleaser “Colomb” to “Keep Me There” indeed doing just that, with Jaar keeping us right where he left us last go-round, to the luminous titular track “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See" and omni-prophesy of  “Specters of The Future” - please join us in a warm welcoming return to this universally acclaimed classic LP, which garnered coveted spots in both RA’s Album Of The Year and Pitchfork’s Top 20 in 2011, now in its unmissable pristine new vinyl form, sounding as fresh as ever, a solid 10 years later.

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Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (Ten Year Edition)

olas Jaar has graduated-- at least from the trappings of any young electronic music producer (his graduation from Brown University is 18 months away). Four years after his debut on the Brooklyn label Wolf + Lamb, and the much lauded follow up 'Time for Us', whose glacial slow-jam take on house sent journalists scrambling for adjectives, the 20 year old New Yorker by way of Chile returns to Circus Company with Space is Only Noise, an uncompromising manifesto on traces of the past, love lost, and specters of the future. 

Having previously contributed to the catalog twice with his 'Marks and Angels' EP as well as the sublime 'Your Waltz' on the Snuggle and Slap compilation, we are delighted to present his first foray into the realm of the long player. 

Jaar has made it quite apparent over the course of his nascent catalog and increasingly sought after live sets that challenge is an intrinsic part of his creative discourse. Few are the producers of any age with the cohones to ride a sub-100-bpm tempo at peak time in the techno Mecca of Berlin, and fewer still are those who receive an ecstatic hands-in-the-air response for their precocious efforts. It is precisely this sense of risk which elevates Space is Only Noise beyond the realm of valiant first effort or crossover dance music oddity. Those looking to wade through the sea of Jaar’s potential influences will quickly find themselves in the deep waters of golden age Factory records, home spun digitalism of Mille Plateaux, Endtroducing era DJ Shadow and Eric Satie.

Jaar gently coaxes his listener into the experience from the opening sounds of rolling waves on 'Être', but quickly transitions into the sophisticated percussion and meandering melodies that characterise his sound. Jaar seeks, and often finds, beauty in melancholy on the first few tracks of the album. As the album begins to accelerate with 'Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust', Jaar confronts us with the often forgotten reality that our sadness is not mutually exclusive from the dance floor.

Suddenly, on 'Keep Me There', Jaar’s voice appears over the delicious, rumbling melody. "We're in a really bad bed, right?" he remarks. "Mm-- it's not really a bed. It's like a balloon" responds a sultry female voice as they both crumble away in laughter. Though your hips stir to the relentless bassline and the sexiness of the voices, your heart is jolted out of its luxurious malaise when horns erupts seconds later. 

"How can you talk about a landscape without showing the sky and the earth?" a voice asks, translating from the French on 'Être'. So Jaar concludes, revisiting the same track to end the album. Complete landscapes such as these are only realised in contrast- the indulgent against the reserved, the sky against the earth; lightness and darkness. 

Space Is Only Noise is a tour de force with few modern equals, and a great sign of things to come from one of electronic music’s most exciting producers. 


Nicolas Jaar - Keep Me There

CircusCompany