Nicolás Jaar - Piedras 1 & 2 [2LP]

Other People

£30.76

Format: 2 x LP
Catalogue No.: OP078
Barcode: 4251804183321
Release Date: 13 Dec 2024
Genre: Electronic

The initial seed for this project was planted in 2020 when Nicolás Jaar wrote the song “Piedras” for a concert at the Museum of Memory & Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, which commemorates the victims of human rights violations during the military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990.

Between 2022-2023 it took on a new form as a radio play entitled 'Archivos de Radio Piedras', which was shared on a dedicated Telegram channel. In 2024, the play was converted into a 24 channel installation at the University Museum of Mexico City (MUAC), where it was exhibited for 5 months.

Piedras 1 and 2 is a collection of the tracks featured within the play, all new music by Jaar, but partly presented within the play as the music of Salinas Hasbún (the name a composite homage to Jaar's grandmothers, Graciela Salinas and Miriam Hasbún).

The play follows two friends mourning the disappearance of Salinas Hasbún, a musician and writer who vanished in the early 2020s. Although they live in a future where technology is advanced, they resort to DIY radio methods because the anonymous group “Las 0cho” has launched a worldwide attack on undersea internet cables, causing a global internet blackout.

The play's central theme revolves around the idea that truths, memories and identities speak from the cracks (“rasgaduras”), or the "in-between" spaces ("en el entre"). This concept is supported by the way much of the narration unfolds - in the liminal spaces between radio frequencies. The instability and transitory nature of a constantly shifting radio dial becomes not just a metaphor but the structure of the play itself. It’s in these moments of noise, static and interference that the deeper revelations of the story emerge. This disjointed, ever-changing medium mirrors the way memory and trauma operate within the play - non-linear, slipping through the gaps, found in fragments or ordinary moments, rather than direct transmissions of “official” historical accounts.

This notion reaches its climax at the end of the narrative, when a text is discovered in which Salinas speaks of finding a new number in a small pond in a cave mentioned in the first episodes of the radio play. This pond, inside the “cochlea of the world”, is seen as a way to introduce real-life randomness to computation. Embodied in the salt lakes of northern Chile, home to the world’s oldest bacteria, this randomness disrupts the rigid order of binary code, paving the way for a transformation of digital life.

Tracklist:
A1 / 1. Cangilón A2 / 2. Piedras A3 / 3. Aquí A4 / 4. Agua pa fantasmas B1 / 5. Rio de las tumbas B2 / 6. Viento B3 / 7. Mi viejita B4 / 8. No Hope C1 / 1. Radio Chomio (con Eli Wewentxu) C2 / 2. Rio radio correspondencia anfibia C3 / 3. 3eee C4 / 4. F Collect C5 / 5. Even heaven is uneven C6 / 6. El azar D1 / 7. I, you D2 / 8. Heterodina D3 / 9. Sin Conexión D4 / 10. SSS1 D5 / 11. SSS2 D6 / 12. SSS3