Uitgebracht
February 2022
- The original recording of Jaar's evolving Weavings composition—featuring Senyawa, Juliana Huxtable, Aho Ssan and more—is an astounding, time-shifting accomplishment.
- Weaving is a core aspect of the culture of the Mapuche people, whose craft isn't only about clothing and economics but art, knowledge and tradition, with stories, patterns and skills passed down from generation to generation through the textiles themselves. Their territory includes Chile, where Nicolás Jaar grew up. Jaar's own work has become concerned with fabric and threads lately—the last two albums released under his own name, Telas and Cenizas, translated to "fabrics" and "ashes," respectively. ("Cenizas was the ashes of a destruction. Telas is the fabrics of a construction," he explained in the notes for the latter LP.) Following on, Weavings, which features 13 guest musicians in an ensemble format, feels like the culmination of this thread, one giant, kaleidoscopic textile that encompasses Jaar's artistry.
These artists were invited to improvise the piece together over Zoom in one-sitting in September 2020, a remarkable fact considering how intricately crafted it sounds. Each member of the group was granted 21 minutes of playing time at different times, but all are present for the entire performance, intently watching the others and absorbing their contributions. For his part, Jaar acts as the director, conceiving, curating and mixing the eventual release in just 24 hours for its debut at Unsound's online festival in the same month. (It was later performed on stage at Unsound 2021 and has become an evolving composition with different configurations and players each time.)
Each musician represents one thread—Dirar Kalash on the oud, Laraaji on the piano, Resina on the dello, Juliana Huxtable with vocals, Angel Bat Dawid on the clarinet, Senyawa doing their thing, etc. These elements can initially seem out of place, but each helps shape the pattern of the group's weaving, and influences how the other instrumentalists call and respond to one another. At times Weavings is volatile, at others patient. The ensemble abandons any semblance of harmony and melody, instead prioritising atmosphere and raw instinct. Combined with Jaar's rapturous, swirling electronics, each instrument groans and lurches like wildlife from a different planet.
More than ever Jaar retains his singular ability to generate sounds that make you think, "what even is that?" These sonic landscapes, as terraformed by the ensemble, can evoke the crunching, eeriness of a woodland at night ("Part 1") or the croaking and churning sounds you'd expect from the maw of some great beast ("Part 4"). The fluidity with which Weavings moves from one kind of atmosphere to the next is something to behold—there's a message here about interconnectedness, and how, on a macro level, everything ripples into and is inseparable from everything else.
Take "Part 3," with its distorted orchestral carnage. It flings you through some inter-dimensional portal, starting with guttural sounds that feel like frantic breathing. On the other side things become more acoustic and grounded, yet Weavings never stops feeling unsettling in its profound unfamiliarity. With its organic yet extradimensional-sounding instrumentation, and it's unplaceable ambience, it feels like Jaar's textile is being woven with the fabrics of space and time.
"One of the most beautiful gifts that you can have as a musician is when someone patiently listens," Jaar told Pitchfork late last year, discussing Weavings. There's no skimming through this one—it's all or nothing in the sense that you have to devote all of your attention to it, or none at all. During my first listen I felt the consistent level of immersion typically reserved for arthouse cinema. As background music, it quickly becomes unsettling and maladapted for most environments. The thread has to be followed from start to finish in order to be grasped or understood in any meaningful way.
Weavings is a singular metaphysical voyage that seizes you and takes you wherever it wants you to go, so long as you're willing and patient enough. The ensemble's ability to seamlessly marry ancient-sounding acoustic and future-facing electronics transports you to a place where time and other fundamental laws of the universe begin to flake away like bits of rust. By the time its long fabric runs out of thread, it has covered lightyears of sonic ground, shape-shifting into forms previously unimaginable until Jaar and company decided to raise their needles and weave.
Tracklist01. Aho Ssan, Angel Bat Dawid, Dirar Kalash, Ellen Fullman, Księżyc, Laraaji, Nicolás Jaar, Pawel Szamburski, Resina, Rolando Hernández Guzmán, Wukir Suryadi - Part 1
02. Aho Ssan, Angel Bat Dawid, Dirar Kalash, Ellen Fullman, Księżyc, Laraaji, Nicolás Jaar, Pawel Szamburski, Resina, Rolando Hernández Guzmán, Wukir Suryadi - Part 2
03. Aho Ssan, Resina, Ka Baird - Part 3
04. Ka Baird, Dirar Kalash, Rully Shabara - Part 4
05. Juliana Huxtable, Rully Shabara, Rolando Hernández Guzmán - Part 5
06. Rully Shabara, Wukir Suryadi, Rolando Hernández Guzmán - Part 6
07. Wukir Suryadi, Księżyc, Paweł Szamburski - Part 7
08. Paweł Szamburski, Ellen Fullman - Part 8
09. Ellen Fullman, Pawel Szamburski, Nicolás Jaar, Laraaji, Aho Ssan, Ka Baird, Resina, Księżyc - Part 9