Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington Bring Darkside to a Close

I had the enormous pleasure of catching Other People duo DARKSIDE at Fortune Sound Club in Vancouver this past January. I loved how well they dialed up their music in a live setting; I loved having Dave Harrington wax poetic to me about High Water and his own hour-long all piano mixtape; I loved Nicolas Jaar's 'Jarhead, three weeks later' haircut.

Unfortunately, unless you'll be in Brooklyn on September 12th you won't be able to experience any of that because DARKSIDE are bringing their project to a close. Though it brings us great pain to do so, we decided to send them off with a run through of everything that made the pair so special.

Before transforming it into the serial label we now know as Other People, Nicolas Jaar ran a little operation by the name of Clown & Sunset. It hosted gems such as Nico's Bluewave Edits, Valentin Stip's first endeavors, and a surreptitious little EP entitled Darkside. Though he provided little in the way of explanation, the fact that it was produced by Nicolas Jarr and a then relatively unknown Dave Harrington was enough to catch the attention of Jaar's loyal followers.

Following the release of Random Access Memories and many, many jaw-droppingly terrible "Get Lucky" trap remixes, Darkside discreetly put out Random Access Memories Memories—a complete rework of Daft Punk's latest studio album. Though attributed only to the moniker "Daftside," it didn't take long for people to put two and two together. Despite providing the absolute minimum in the way of promo, the project cemented their relevance within a much wider audience.

As the dust settled on Random Access Memories Memories and Other People was starting to gain traction, the first track from their debut LP, Psychic, then appeared stream-able only at other-people.net. At 11 minutes and 20 seconds long, "Golden Arrow" wasn't for the faint of heart. The second, vocal-driven single, "Paper Trails," was then released shortly after and helped cement our vision of the album. Psychic finally saw the light of day on October 8th to great fanfare, and has been a staple in this author's iTunes ever since.

Nico, Dave, we know that all good things must end. Whatever you have planned for the future, we wish you the best of luck.

Ziad likes Darkside, okay? - @bluuuuueeeeeee

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