This week's PBS Feature Album is Nothing, the third album from DARKSIDE and the first that the group – founded by Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington – have completed as a trio with new drummer Tlacael Esparza. Nothing is nine transmissions of negative space, telepathic seance, and spectral improvisation.
On their first two reinventions, Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington entered the studio with a clutch of scattered ideas to mold into what became the revered Psychic (2013) and Spiral (2021). But Nothing reflects a search for form borne out of spontaneous elliptical jams, acoustic riffing, and digital levitations. And in a fundamental shift from their first dozen years as a band, the duo recruited their longtime friend and collaborator, the drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza, to become a full-time member. The outcome is magnetic and hieroglyphic. This album slips through the cracks of convention with serpentine guitars, extraterrestrial static, and cavernous drums. No band but DARKSIDE could have made Nothing, and in no moment but now.
Tune in all this week to hear tracks from Nothing, and PBS Members have the chance to win a copy of the album on vinyl: simply email your name and membership number to before midnight Sunday March 23.
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TOP TRACKS WE'RE LOVING THIS WEEK
Liz Stringer - 'To Survive'
Lucy Dacus - 'Talk'
The Counterfeit - 'Hurricane Lilah'
Wilson Tanner - 'Blush'
Jerome Blazé - 'Another You' feat. Dylan Atlantis and Miles Nautu
Wet Kiss - 'Isn't Music Wonderful'
Ed Kuepper & Jim White - 'The Crying Dance'
Treebeard - 'Erebus'
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - 'Stiches'
Mulga Bore Hard Rock - 'Sweet Home Mulga Bore'
