Telas

As a newcomer to the electronic scene, Nicolas Jaar, then still a college student, made his mark by slowing minimal techno into a form both woozy and sensuous. Since then, his music has become steadily hazier and less rhythmic, exploring a rich mixture of ambient atmospheres and electro-acoustic textures. Telas is the Chilean American musician’s second album of 2020, following Cenizas, and it might be his gauziest record yet. The title translates as “Veils,” and the music, created to accompany visual works by the artist Somnath Bhatt, is meant to encapsulate a world where, according to Jaar, “no matter—whether existing in thought, physical form, or other—has a solid or unmovable origin.” The results are fittingly fluid: Incorporating sounds from cellist Milena Punzi, vocalist Susanna Gonzo, and instrument makers Anna Ippolito and Marzio Zorio, Telas flutters like bedsheets in the breeze. Divided into four long tracks, the hour-long album drifts across brushed percussion, free-jazz reeds, and an ever-shifting expanse of luminous, synthetic sounds. There are echoes of Japanese ambient, German cosmic music, and turn-of-the-millennium microsound, but mostly Telas is a world of its own—a multidimensional space so amorphous that it never sounds the same way twice.