Back catalogue: Balearic/Downtempo

Review: In recent years we've had some exceptional examples of what you might call "narco rock 'n' roll". The sort of records that sound excellent when you're high, but seem to lose some of their potency - or relevance - when you're listing through headphones at your desk in the middle of a working day. Darkside's latest is, unsurprisingly, very much of the 'baked goods' ilk, but there's a delightfully pop-friendly element at play here that means you can get a lot out of the experience without having to have your own induced experience.

Musically it's actually relatively conservative stuff, considering the artists involved. Nicolas Jaar is a bonafide electronic visionary who has been pushing boundaries for well over a decade, while Dave Harrington is one of the most forward thinking multi-instrumentalists you'll ever hear. Together, though, they create a space that's strange but also familiar, like rediscovering forgotten albums from the early-1970s psyche heyday.

Review: Darkside - the duo of visionary producer Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington - have brought their touring drummer Tlacael Esparza into the recording process for this third album of theirs and he's now a full-time member. The songs for this album, which were recorded in Los Angeles, the south of France and Paris, came out of a series of improvisational jam sessions and they transport you into their swaggering and inventive universe where anything goes. The sheer joy of 'S.N.C' brings to mind Jaco Pastorius in terms of taking the bass guitar to new heights and the funk keyboard is a throwback to the 80s Casio era. 'Graucha Max' is a lot darker and twisted, delving into psychedelic rock with distorted lines, but then splicing it with sub-heavy bass that would ignite any club dancefloor. Darkside are right up there with the best the Los Angeles scene has to offer right now.

Review: Back in 2011, Nicolas Jaar joined forces with fellow Clown & Sunset contributor Dave Harrington for the Darkside EP, an impressive trio of untitled tracks that pitted the formers scratchy, near-paranoid production style against the latter's penchant for lo-fi indie-rock inspired fuzziness. Here, the duo dusts down the Darkside alias once more for a first collaborative album. Predictably, it's an impressive set, offering a collection of downtempo tracks that shuffle between crackly, out-there atmospherics ("Sitra", reminiscent of much of Jaar's Space is Only Noise album), echo-laden alt-rock experimentalism ("Heart") and heart-aching fragility (the James Blake-ish "Greek Light").