It was only natural that Nymphs would be overlooked.

And yet…

 

Nymphs is an album. I spell this out so plainly because for years now, that has been something of a mystery. Let me explain: the first release containing the moniker was Nymphs II in May of 2015, a vinyl single with two tracks. Rather enigmatic, it was a lone sequel, born without its twin. Soon came Nymphs III and IV, together bringing three more tracks into the picture. Then, that November, the last piece of the puzzle arrived. Or rather, it returned. Nymphs I, as it turned out, had already been released—four years earlier, its two tracks being issued as the “Don’t Break My Love EP” in 2011. And now, October 2016, almost another whole year later, all of these songs have finally been bundled together and released as a complete digital package.

An album, after all.

How could an artist get away with such a puzzling, piecemeal release strategy? The answer is rather simple; because that artist’s name is Nicolas Jaar, and the label that released Nymphs is Other People, which was founded and operated by him.

Jaar dropped into the electronic music spotlight in early 2011 with the release of his debut album Space Is Only Noise If You Can See. A critically-acclaimed work, ambient, and strange, it yanked the young musician into a professional career before he had even graduated from college. But it would be years until Jaar released more music under his own name—after collaborating on a phenomenal rock album and founding Other People, Nymphs II was Jaar’s first long-awaited solo release since his youthful debut. However, before the Nymphs series would be complete and collected into an album, two other official Nicolas Jaar records—Pomegranates in the summer of 2015, and Sirens last Friday—were released that entirely overshadowed its official debut.

What a shame.

Nicolas Jaar’s genre is and has always been electronic dance music. But paradoxically, he has never made music to which you can easily dance. So, then, what makes it dance music? Good question. To radically oversimplify things, any genre that you try to stick to Nicolas Jaar’s music will slip off like wet duct tape, and dance is close enough. But a more satisfying answer would be that it is actually by living within the box of “dance” that Jaar’s music is able to break with expectations and surprise you. Nicolas Jaar’s music takes the strict logic of dance and bends it into a sort-of dream logic that lulls you into sleep before becoming nightmarish and shaking you back awake. Nymphs does this. It is a dance record that, through unexpected shifts in intensity, rhythm, and tone, discourages dancing. Almost magically, this mischievous rule-bending becomes its pathway to success, by turning a dance of the body into a dance of the brain.

The album opens with Don’t Break My Love and its fuzzy noise, crackling for nearly two minutes before the first real beat arrives. Not exactly dropped into the mix, it is more squeezed out slowly like juice from an unripe lime. The beat grows more complex and is soon followed by a steady synth melody and Jaar’s brooding vocalizations (did I mention he sings as well?). But just when the track is running smoothly, almost becoming catchy and danceable, it runs squarely into a wall of white noise, and then, for a long moment, silence. It is moments like these that upon first listen might feel unsatisfying—instead of building and dropping like a house track, or steadily thrumming like techno, Jaar’s brand of dance is unpredictable. And unpredictability makes dancing difficult; nobody wants to be that guy or gal who keeps grooving along to silence when the beat suddenly disappears. But here is where Nicolas Jaar excels: he tosses in a sample, “Don’t break my love / Don’t break my love, please,” and the beat returns for a brief climactic reprise until suddenly it’s all over and the next song begins.

It’s not as satisfying or danceable as a traditional techno track, but it is the final moments like these in Nicolas Jaar’s songs that keep you coming back for more: listening through it all again, and this time, anticipating the noise, the silence, the final drop at the last minute. This is when you can dance, if you want to.

Don’t Break My Love and its partner track Why Didn’t You Save Me are both split like glitches between ambient and danceable electronic music. Whereas, Swim and Mistress (tracks five and six on the album, originally released together as Nymph III) are partitioned, respectively, into a heavy nonstop-beat and then haunting, piano splashed ambience. In this way, Nicolas Jaar leaps across genres both between and within his songs, cruising above any expectations you might have along the way.

Another surprising and engaging element of Nicolas Jaar’s music is his singing. Although Jaar is nowhere close to the only electronic musician to make use of his own voice (James Blake and Baths come quick to mind) there are few singer/producers experimenting with as much minimalism in their vocal lyricism. Like every other element of his sound, Jaar’s vocals are delicately slipped into key moments of his songs.

This is exemplified on Nymphs by the standout sonic odyssey, The Three Sides of Audrey and Why She’s Alone (arguably a love poem for the eccentric Audrey Horne of Twin Peaks). First, we hear ethereal synths and echoing samples cut and pasted into a surreal collage, interspersed with bouts of noise like dentist drills and TV static. Then, finally, at the four minute mark, a bouncy tribal beat announces a change and Nicolas Jaar begins to sing; the beat falls away as he croons, “Bring me to the room / Take me upside down / Tell me what I told you to do.” A new beat drops that bumps like the peaks of a mountain range silhouetted against the evening sky, until it too fades into that sky, before the sky itself, a glorious bed of synthesizers, grows dim and is swallowed into the night. Jaar’s voice only appears briefly in this monster of a song, but it is the peak and the centerpiece—exactly the kind of unexpected vocal minimalism that one could only expect from his music.

Nymphs is tied to Sirens in many ways, but most obviously by the styling of its album art. The two are a pair, undeniably linked and equally important. Critics have raved over Sirens, but (as far as I can tell) not one music news site or blog has yet to mention Nymphs’ official repackaging. I’m reminded of the recent double-release by Frank Ocean of Blonde and Endless, from which only Blonde garnered any serious attention. It seems that neither the public, nor the media, can handle more than one long-awaited release at a time. Especially not when one of those releases has been trickling out for years.

Nymphs is a puzzle, and it was released in pieces. But now that those pieces are together in one box, they are by no means put together. You have to try, and try, and try to do that yourself. But let me assure you, the picture that eventually forms is more beautiful than you could ever unexpect.