DARKSIDE - Spiral ALBUM REVIEW

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As a film major trying to get into photography, this cover is absolutely gorgeous and I really hope it isn’t digitally made.


I think I should go through a little crash course of DARKSIDE. Or at least the members of them. Prolific electronic producer Nicolás Jaar (For R&B fans, he produced The Weeknd’s “Call Out My Name.”) and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington come back together as the DARKSIDE duo after a six-year gap from their debut album, Psychic. That’s really all I got on it. It’s rumored that this was recorded back in 2018 and finished in 2019 but hasn’t seen the light of day for currently unknown reasons. The duo’s second album, Spiral, is here for the public to listen to, so let’s not waste any more time and get into it.

I’ll say that right off the bat that the main attraction here is the production, and it delivers on that end. This album sounds GORGEOUS. Yes, it deserves all caps. Literally every single song here has some odd amount of detail and intricacy that not a lot of electronic albums have these days. The ambient passages here are drop-dead beautiful, and there are many moments where I just sat there and thought “How can a person make this sound?” and just went with it. While I wasn’t crazy about the vocals, it fit the vibe of the album and if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t really notice them until the final track on the first listen. I was just sitting there, essentially meditating on it, and it works.

Like the cover art, Spiral is like a rainforest to explore. DARKSIDE reunites for a new landscape to map out and they cover every nook and cranny. If all goes well, I’m pretty sure that this will be one of my favorite electronic albums not just of this year but in general too. Yeah, I said it. It’s pretty shocking typing that out, so imagine what happens when you listen to it.


10/10


Listen here

YouTube Music




Spiral is a Matador release.

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