Piedras 1 & 2 are a skeletal statement of self from Nicolás Jaar

If you discovered him through Space is Only Noise, then he appears as a formless microhouse wizard, pulling together collages of minimal beats and natural soundscapes. If it was the Sirens era, you may expect him to dress like a Blade Runner extra and speak in reverbed tongues. My watercooler story of discovery was through his brilliant Against All Logic: 2012-2017 record under his similarly titled side-project. This just means I’m always waiting for the beat to drop. Piedras, from the skeletal latin pop of Piedras 1 to the melodic ambience of Piedras 2, presents Jaar as nothing but the auteur behind it all.

Split up by tone and genre, Piedras 1 sees Jaar fully embracing nocturnal latin pop in ways he previously only made brief pit-stops. Each track is an evolving dreamscape of reverbed rhythms and refrains, gaining constant momentum even in their drowned-out states. Piedras 2 completes the ying-yang of Jaar's musical psyche by indulging his ambient tendencies. Even at their most bare, these synth-driven tracks are compositions of tension and beauty, displaying he can wring out both rhythm and distanced tenderness from any sound. This attention to sounds big and small is part of why Jaar is a producer with character; for the last decade and change of his career, his songs live and die by their auditory fidelity.

With Piedras being easily definable within two conjunctive sentences (this side is latin pop/this side is ambient), it speaks to either Jaar’s craft or my inherent knee-jerk admiration of his work that his records succeed. His treatment of details, such as the cavernous quality of his vocals and their watery processing, are as indulgent as any comparatively showy drumline – and they do steal the spotlight.

The steam-pipe hiss of the “Viento” groove is colored by a delicate organ riff, growing in momentum and shifting into a new, darker mode. The tracks of Piedras 1 mostly follow suit: pick a groove, slather on the vocal processing for a hypnotic refrain, and switch it up sometime between minutes three and four. It works every time because he’s a master or I’m a sucker. Maybe part of being a master is making a sucker out of your listener.

At that point, it would make the Piedras 2 switch-up all the more impressive from a pacing standpoint. While rhythm is sparse, the final leg of this side is a suite of a single, knotty drumline growing increasingly more complex until the record ends out of sheer panic. The race to that propulsive finish line is conversely a set of genuinely breathtaking compositions mixing natural sounds and somehow more natural synths.

“Rio radio correspondencia anfibia” in particular was so moving that it began raining as soon as it came up during my listen; I was walking my dog at 2am and the natural world around me had to shape itself around it. The following “F Collect” burrows itself into that hole as well, even if it’s a dead ringer for a Silent Hill 2 soundtrack cut. Akira Yamaoka shows up when you need him for your album the most, it seems.

While the rhythmic suite ending Piedras 2 reminded the listener of the good-times ho-down they had just moments ago in Piedras 1, the latter already came preloaded with “Song of Hope,” a fittingly resolute and methodic closer in its own right. For a record concerned with texture in its sparsest of glories, a more withheld finale perhaps fit the the tone of Piedras 2 more, or at least could’ve gone for broke like Jaar has in the past. Knowing Jaar’s music, he most likely had a sample of a German school bus chant after a successful football match he could’ve inlaid somewhere. I won’t ask for more, though. As a picture of Jaar and the dual simplicity of his work, I would ask for nothing more than a rhythm and a brush of beauty.