DARKSIDE
Berghain, Berlin | October 8th
Modern music has no shortage of doomsayers. Even in today’s landscape, as the diversity of sound grows ever greater, there will always be those eager to point the finger at the Mumfords, Disclosures and HAIMs of the world and cite the death of innovation in favour of mass-market appeal. And, in many respects, they would be right.
Then again, when an artist as apparently un-mainstream as Nicolas Jaar can sell out a Europe-wide tour, with tickets being touted for over €60 outside the Berlin gig and hundreds of people queuing for the supposed final 50 (there were actually only 31) tickets on the door, it can’t be all bad, can it?
Make no mistake, musical adventurism of a certain kind is in rude health right now, and the fact an artist like Jaar can achieve such unprecedented success is hugely reassuring. Backed by a tsunami of hype and indie acclaim, his recent DARKSIDE collaboration with his one-time session guitarist Dave Harrington has seen him reach an audience wider than ever before, and one look at the crowd crammed into Berghain on this early October’s eve – the busiest we’ve ever seen the club for a gig – and it’s clear the pellet-feeder of pop music doesn’t dictate as many tastes as the pessimists might have you believe.
Taking to the stage in typically modest fashion (Nico’s never been one for showboating), he and Harrington murmur little more than a brief greeting before launching headlong into their seamless 60-minute performance. With the duo’s debut album, Psychic, released just a week prior to the show, it’s unclear how familiar the crowd are with its retro-futurist narrative of prog rock electronica. Still, from what we can tell, that doesn’t seem to matter.
Displaying all the onstage composure of a man who’s barely stood still in two years, Nico tweaks a kaleidoscope of brooding, celestial synth-work from the three-tiered bank of hardware that surrounds him. Album opener Golden Arrow ratchets up the tension for a full five or six minutes before dropping anchor – that ponderous kick-snare drum pattern and lolloping bassline seeming more than ever a production hallmark of his these days – while his falsetto wailing on tracks like Heart and Greek Light stirs a palpable shiver among the crowd.
Still, for the most part it’s Harrington’s unashamedly indulgent guitar work that really gets people animated. While much of Psychic feels like a repackaging of sounds first popularised at a time when most of the audience were little more than a couple of joints and a back seat away from conception, there’s no denying the appeal of Dave’s openly Floyd-esque fretboard wandering on Paper Trails or The Only Shrine I’ve Seen. Both tracks enjoy a contemporary club-ready makeover that befits the surroundings, but it’s a bit odd to watch a bunch of snapback-sporting bros and die-hard Pitchfork disciples losing their shit to an eight-minute porn-grade guitar solo.
And therein lies a seeming paradox in the whole DARKSIDE project. When Disclosure openly reference the house music of the early 90s, or when HAIM make an album that sounds like Shania Twain through an iPhone, they’re lambasted for being retrograde and unadventurous. While no-one could ever call Jaar and Harrington’s live show either of those things, perhaps it’s worth noting that it’s a two way street, and that the power to exploit nostalgia isn’t just a tool of the modern mainstream.
Still, given the choice, we’ll take DARKSIDE’s slick, self-referential psychedelia every time.
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Words: Alex Gwilliam
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