The Chilean-American sophisticate Nicolas Jaar is often derided by people who like their electronic music robust and to the point. Understandably, really – his noodlings often make James Blake sound like AC/DC . But Jaar is something of a left-field superstar. On his 2011 debut album, there was at least a semblance of a slow club-music pulse, while last year’s Pomegranates consisted of 20 glitched-out instrumental sketches. Sirens is something else again: in just 40 minutes, you’ll hear Suicide’s louche techno-punk (albeit slathered in high-gloss electronica and French lounge jazz), Karl Hyde of Underworld’s dada chants, lashings of Talk Talk, and Phil Collins doing Chilean cumbia. The song structures constantly meander and fragment and often dissolve into silence and drone before reconstituting. If this idea seems baffling, it makes no more sense at all in the listening, and by turns hypnotises, frustrates and dazzles. This obstreperousness will only further alienate the doubters, but you cannot fault Jaar’s preposterous ambition.
