★★★★★
Nicolas Jaar has had the kind of career only possible in the digital era. After putting out a few singles, he released his one and only solo album, 2011's Space Is Only Noise, when he was 21 and still a student at Brown University. That record introduced a unique sensibility that centered on Jaar's expertly constructed slow-burn rhythms and his unusual voice, which looms between speaking, singing, and chanting in an almost comically low register...
- pitchfork.com
2015-07-08
★★★★★
LP version. Second edition with amended tracklisting (the track "I Got A Woman" has been deleted). Four years after his debut EP on Wolf + Lamb, Nicolas Jaar, the New Yorker by way of Chile returns to Circus Company with Space Is Only Noise, an uncompromising manifesto on traces of the past, love lost, and spectres of the future...
- www.forcedexposure.com
2012-02-02
★★★★★
With Nicolas Jaar's debut LP, Space Is Only Noise, still standing as one of the year's most provocative and inventive takes on dance music--admittedly, the term is being used loosely here--it was only a matter of time before someone would be tapped to bring his songs just a little closer to the dancefloor...
- www.xlr8r.com
2011-07-11
★★★★★
In the social media era, personal brands are currency. From Carles on down, everybody knows that. If some online frenemy is stepping on your taste's toes, something else is easy to cop (i.e., "Shell art is over!"). In the '90s, "poser" would have applied to this kind of encroachment, but such absolutes are one of the things that has failed to make a comeback. These days, nobody wants a band to be his or her life. How about, "My curatorial skills could be your life"...
- dustedmagazine.com
2011-05-23
★★★★★
Nicolas Jaar is billed as a dance producer. This is a lie, a lie evident from the first minute of the opening track. He produces minimalist electronic music that blurs the lines between sample and real instrumentation, leaving the listener guessing at almost every sound. "Nicolas Jaar is a dance producer" is a lie, but a very enjoyable one. The songs often evolve from loopy vocals and synthesizers into a deep seated groove, with the vocals guiding it all perfectly into place...
- www.noripcord.com
2011-03-28
★★★★★
So it goes. The random series of absurd coincidences we normally label existence has once again struck by releasing Nicolas Jaar's debut LP, Space is Only Noise, only a few weeks after the release of James Blake's much hyped self-titled debut. Both are young men in their early 20s. Both have enjoyed enormous amounts of attention off the back of just a few early club singles, EPs and remixes...
- thequietus.com
2011-03-14
★★★★★
As James Blake is gushed on by the critical cacophony, a different young wunderkind will likely be overlooked. Nicolas Jaar, just 20 years old, is at least as deceptively related to the electronic music community as Blake; his indirect affiliation lies with house and techno rather than dubstep. Each has taken bold sonic risks within their respective genres, and Jaar in particular is drawing on a musical palette that is remarkably rich with influences...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-03-07
★★★★★
At this point, "minimal" and "techno" are pretty poor words to describe the work of Nicolas Jaar, a 21-year-old Brown University student by day and controversial club messiah figure by night whose debut LP, Space Is Only Noise, represents either the height of egghead twattery or a new vanguard for electronic music, depending on whom you choose to believe...
- tinymixtapes.com
2011-02-20
★★★★★
Strange can exist anywhere, but we have a habit of thinking only the maximal and unhinged-- Captain Beefheart, Basement Jaxx, R. Kelly-- are truly weird. How bizarre can the music of Philip Glass or Wolfgang Voigt really be? It seems contained, planned; the curio is the choice to be so on-keel in the first place. One of my favorite aspects of Nicolas Jaar's debut full-length, Space Is Only Noise, is how thoroughly it scatters this misconception...
- pitchfork.com
2011-02-17
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