New York-based composer of Chilean origin and one of the most enigmatic contemporary electronic music artists, Nicolas Jaar, will perform on November 13th at Hangar Port Belgrade, under the organization of new Apgrade events. His third appearance in Belgrade will also be the first DJ set that one of the biggest young stars of the global electronic music will perform in Belgrade. The previous two appearances were concerts – with his band in 2012, and with the project Darkside in 2014 on a memorable performance in a trench under the Military Museum at Kalemegdan fort, the same place where the first Apgrade weekend was held. His return to the DJ desk presents Jaar to the global audience once again not only as a superb artist, but as a first-class disk jockey. Along with Jaar also comes a Parisian from Brooklyn, DJ and producer Valentin Stip, a pianist who merged his classical music education with electronic music and represented it to the scene with the acclaimed album “Sigh”. As of today the tickets for this party can be bought at the box office of Eventim and Gigstix and the first price is 990 dinars.
Nicolas Jaar’s career has been a subject of interest not only to the demanding electronic music audience but also to the researchers of modern transgenre phenomenon. Being the son of one of the most important Chilean visual artists of the 20th century Alfredo Jaar and the New York designer Evelyn Maynard, Nicolas grew up in an exciting and creative artistic environment in which music, performance art and modern design are intertwined. His early entry into the electronic club culture can be seen as a search for his own style and artistic independence. The success of this road is not only evidenced by his status as one of the biggest stars of this direction who causes enormous interest wherever he appears, but also by very specific awards such as the triple choice for the world’s best live performance by Resident Advisor, the bible of the current electronic scene. After a few singles and club hits “El Bandido” and “Mi Mujer”, he released the album “Space Is Only Noise” in 2011 as a 21-year-old student at Brown University. This album became an instant classic recognizable by the combination of slow burning Latin rhythms and influences of the popular “Americana” and blouse, colored by specific Jaar’s vocals.
This year, after the end of the project Darkside, Jaar has released the album “Pomegranates”, which is an imaginary soundtrack for the masterpiece of Armenian director Sergei Paradianova, “The color of pomegranate”, which was filmed in 1982. Jaar described this film’s composition as “a collage of ambient music created in the last two years,” made up out of the interesting parts of the tracks that have not been published. The architecture of sound, complex textures and sound landscapes are the terms which to some extent describe the sound on this issue which is relocated outside the clear genre boundaries.
The current Jaar’s tour is the return from the waters of abstraction in music to the fully fledged dance floor spectacle. He describes his club sound as “rhythmic pain: the music that you are happy to dance to but also can indulge in melancholy.” This obviously stems from his vision of electronic music as “elastic” to the limits of creativity – open to receive any influence, and every artistic impulse. Therefore his third appearance in Belgrade on November 13th will be an opportunity to hear the conditions of his current DJ imagination in which he has more elements of hedonism than before.
In the past two months previous Apgrade parties have hosted some of the biggest names in contemporary electronic music such as Richie Hawtin, Loco Dice, Mathew Jonson, Function, Efdemin, Boris, Fabio Florido, Julian Jeweil, Caleb Calloway and others. Nicolas Jaar will show how a large space as Port Belgrade can be experienced in a completely different way. Those who attended his live performances in the Garden of Sava Center and the after party at the cult club 20/44, know how his musical selection includes all the elements necessary for an energetic and above all an original DJ set, which brings delight to the audience who wants to dance, but also carries a special creativity in the way he plays it.
